 Professor W.G. Richards
Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory
Office: Inhibox Laboratory, 36-37 Pembroke St.
Oxford OX1 1BP
Telephone: 44 (0) 1865 262 011
Computer-aided molecular design was a description of this work
coined in this group which pioneered the topic and became one of
the world's leading groups in a subject now vigorously pursued
in industry, particularly pharmaceuticals, as well as academia. We
no longer accept graduate students but work with postdocs and visitors.
Drugs are small molecules which bind to target macromolecules,
DNA or protein. There are three possible scenarios: the macromolecular
target is unknown; the protein is known, but the binding site is
not identified; and in the ideal case we know the actual target
site in atomic detail.
In the past we have developed methods to cover all three areas,
but currently are concentrating on the application of pattern recognition
techniques to handle masses of molecular data.
This was prompted by the success of our screensaver project which
was the biggest computational chemistry project ever undertaken,
involving screening 3.5 billion compounds against protein targets,
led by the group using screen saver time on over three
million personal computers in over 200 countries. Find
out more about the ScreenSaver Lifesaver project here.
The screensaver project led to the formation of the spin-out company
Inhibox Ltd (www.inhibox.com)
where Professor Richards now conducts his research. The company
has recently launched a free virtual screening service (http://www.inhibox.com/drugfinder).
Professor Richards holds a number of non-executive directorships
including IP Group Plc www.ipgroupplc.com and is much involved
in the creation of spin-out companies.
NFCR Centre for Computational Drug Discovery
A generous grant from the National Foundation for Cancer Research
has led to the setting up of this Centre within the group. Find
out more about the CCDD here. The NFCR are our partners in
the DrugFinder project.
Selected recent publications
Books
- Quantum Pharmacology, W.G. Richards,
Butterworths, London, 2nd edn. (1983).
- Computer-aided molecular design,
ed. W.G. Richards, IBC Press, (1989).
- Computational Chemistry, G.H. Grant
and W.G. Richards, Oxford University Press (1995).
- Spin-outs. Creating businesses from university intellectual
property, W.G. Richards. Harriman House (2009).
Articles
- Pinpointing anthrax-toxin inhibitors.
M. Glick, G.H. Grant, W.G. Richards. Nature Biotechnology 20: 118-119 (2002).
- Identification of ligand binding sites
on proteins using a multi-scale approach. M. Glick, D.D.
Robinson, G.H. Grant, W.G. Richards. J.
Am. Chem. Soc. 124:
2337-2344 (2002).
- Virtual screening using GRID computing:
the screensaver project. W.G. Richards. Nature Reviews
Drug Discovery 1, 551- 555 (2002).
- Combating bioterrorism with personal
computers. W.G. Richards, G.H. Grant, K.N. Harrison. J.
Mol. Graphics Mod. 22, 473-478 (2004).
- From diatomics to drugs and distributions. W.G.
Richards. J. Med. Chem. 48, 337-344
(2005).
- Ultrafast shape recognition for
similarity search in molecular databases. P. Ballester, W.G.
Richards. Proc.
Roy. Soc. A. 463, 1307-1321 (2007).
- Ultrafast shape recognition to search compound databases
for similar molecular shapes. P. Ballester and W.G. Richards. J.
Comp. Chem. 28, 1711-1723 (2007)
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