Centre for Biodiscovery

Centre for Biodiscovery

The Centre for Biodiscovery is one of Victoria University's applied research centres. The Centre has close to links with the Schools of Biological Sciences and Chemical & Physical Sciences and has joint research with staff in the Schools of Psychology and Mathematical & Computing Sciences.

The Centre is the sixth applied research centre to be established, after the establishment of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology (now a Government-funded Centre for Research Excellence), the New Zealand Institute for Research on Ageing in February 2002, the Crime and Justice Research Centre in August 2002 and the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families in February 2003 and the Centre of Applied Cross-Cultural Psychology in October 2003. Under the University's strategic plan at least 10 applied research centres will be established to focus on areas of specialist research.

Projects completed or underway at the centre include discovery and design of anticancer drugs, searches for naturally-occurring pest control agents, plant proteins affecting food quality and reactivity, and protein targets for selection of disease resistance and productivity traits in livestock,

The Centre's core staff members are: Dr Bill Jordan (Centre Director), Dr Alan Clark, Dr John Miller and Dr Paul Teesdale-Spittle (School of Biological Sciences) and Dr Peter Northcote (School of Chemical & Physical Sciences). The Centre’s expertise is in discovery and design of biologically active molecules using natural product and synthetic chemistry, characterisation of the activity of biomolecules using cellular and molecular methods and in protein technology and proteomics.

Proteomics is one of the new technologies that has emerged to make use of the information gained from sequencing human and other genomes. Proteomics studies complex patterns of proteins and uses the information to decipher the genes that are responsible for normal and disease biology. Victoria University has been a leader in this research in New Zealand and is now a participant in the international human proteome project.

Centre for Biodiscovery projects are collaborative with several Crown Research Institutes and other research organisations in New Zealand including with AgResearch, Institute for Environmental Science and Research, Industrial Research Ltd, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Sciences, ViaLactia Biosciences, Fonterra Research Centre and the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research.

The Centre's website is: http://www.vuw.ac.nz/biodiscovery/index.aspx

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