Dr Bradley Doak is a Research Fellow and Senior Scientist in the Monash Fragment Platform where he works on both academic and industry fragment-based design projects.

“The inspiration in my research and career has come from the people I have worked with who have similar commitment and priorities for conducting research. For me, the reward is working together to solve research problems, in an environment where we can all grow and continue contribute in a positive way to the wider community,” Brad says.

As a member of the Centre for Fragment-Based Design, Brad enjoys the opportunity to work on a broad variety of projects as well as the industry focused training and masterclasses.

Research Overview

Brad’s research is focused on the application of cheminformatics and parallel chemistry to efficient fragment screening and development.

Currently Brad and his research project team have developed an efficient workflow for transitioning from primary fragment screen to validation, analogue selection and medicinal chemistry to quickly develop weak affinity fragments into higher affinity chemical probes – without the need for structural information of the fragment bound to the target. This has required the integrated use of biophysics, cheminformatics and medicinal chemistry and is applicable to a wide variety of targets. The group is continuing to build on this with further examples and to extend the currently available screening and chemistry techniques which can be applied in this workflow.

Latest Publications

View Dr Doak’s latest ORCID publication listing here.

Education

Completing his undergraduate studies in Medicinal Chemistry with Honours at Monash University, Brad went on to pursue a PhD in Synthetic Medicinal Chemistry (Fragment-Based Design) with Professor Martin Scanlon and Jamie Simpson. He also undertook a post-doctoral research position with Professor Jan Kihlberg at the Uppsala University, Sweden, focusing on Beyond the Rule of 5 in Medicinal Chemistry.

Grants and Awards

• Monash University Silver Jubilee Postgraduate Scholarship (2009-2012)
• Monash University Jubilee Honours Scholarship (2008)