University of Bradford
Dr Klaus Pors graduated with a BEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark in 1998 and completed his studies in medicinal chemistry at the UCL School of Pharmacy in 2002.
Both his PhD and Postdoc (UCL School of Pharmacy 2002-05) was focused on the discovery of anticancer agents and hypoxia-activated prodrugs to treat solid tumours.
In 2005 he relocated to Bradford to take up a Yorkshire Cancer Research-funded lecturer position at the Institute of Cancer Therapeutics. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Chemical Biology at the University of Bradford in 2013.
“Since my PhD I’ve been involved in cancer drug discovery and I’ve always had an interest in solid tumours and the complexity of the microenvironment. The latter presents both obstacles and opportunities for treatment and our attention has been focused on CYPs present in RMS for drug development.”
Research
Research in the Pors group is focussed on research at the interface between chemistry and biology. Traditional approaches to drug discovery such as target oriented synthesis and medicinal chemistry are used to develop focussed libraries of small molecules that are entirely new chemical entities or re-engineered versions of natural products. In addition, his group uses diversity-oriented synthesis to generate collections of small molecules of structural diverse architecture, which can be used to probe new chemical space or known biological pathways that are not well understood. In the context of cancer, small molecules are designed to (i) exploit enzymatic and/or physiological conditions found unique to the tumour microenvironment or (ii) circumvent or exploit resistance mechanisms present in malignant tissue. As an extension of the latter, we are actively engaged in understanding how epigenetic therapy may affect the regulation and expression of drug metabolising enzymes (pharmacoepigenetics). In addition, we are also interested in developing molecular fluorescent probes that can be used to stain fixed or live cells with wide applications in routine and research laboratories utilising flow cytometry and fluorescence imaging methods.
Qualifications
University College London – PhD
University of Southern Denmark – BEng
External Examiner, BSc Biopharmaceutical Science, University of Sunderland
External Examiner, MSc in Drug Design and Discovery, University of Salford
Memberships
Editor, CICR Editorial Board (AACR, 2012-2016)
Past Executive Member: British Association for Cancer Research (BACR)
Elected member of the EPSRC peer review college (2016-)
Elected member of the British Council, Newton Schemes (2016-)
0161 295 3864 