For more detail about our research interests, our team, or the latest opportunities to join our lab please visit our website: https://www.lovell-lab.com.

The Lovell Group

Research in the Lovell group is at the interface of chemistry, biology, and medicine and includes peptide synthesis, covalent drug discovery, chemical proteomics, and phage display. We are interested in using new chemical modalities to image or treat diseases including cancer and antibiotic-resistant infections.

Specific research projects include -

Covalent Phage Display – we generate billions of covalent cyclic peptides for screening against ‘undruggable’ proteins by cyclising peptides displayed on phage particles with electrophile-containing linchpins (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0733-7)

Targeted Covalent Macrocycles (TCMs) – using innovative cyclisation chemistry combined with robotics we generate vast libraries of electrophilic macrocycles for screening against difficult-to-drug protein targets.

Protease-activated Imaging Agents and Pro-drugs – we develop irreversible inhibitors that release a fluorophore or cytotoxic agent to cancerous tissue after covalent modification of a protease (https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.1c03950).

Covalent Fragment Libraries – we use novel synthetic methodology to assemble libraries of covalent fragments that exist within pharmaceutically relevant chemical space. We aim to use these libraries to inhibit protein-protein interactions that drive cancer progression.

Scott Lovell

Scott Lovell is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Chemical Biology in the Department of Life Sciences. Before joining the University of Bath in 2022, he was a postdoctoral researcher and Dean’s fellow in the lab of Matt Bogyo in the School of Medicine at Stanford University. Prior to this Scott acquired his PhD in Chemical Biology at Imperial College in the group of Ed Tate where he was also an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow. Scott has worked in research labs around the world including in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada and has significant industry experience having worked for AstraZeneca and Pfizer as a synthetic chemist.  

If you would like to join our diverse and vibrant research group, please regularly check this webpage for open positions. 

In addition, I am always interested to hear from prospective PhD students who wish to self-fund or who have identified competitive sources of funding (such as a government scholarship) for which we might apply to together.