Tom Simpson's Research Interests

Professor Tom Simpson – Research Interests

BIORGANIC AND NATURAL PRODUCTS CHEMISTRY, CHEMICAL BIOLOGY

Tom Simpson is the senior member of the Bristol Polyketides Group comprising members of academic staff from the Schools of Chemistry (Profs Russell Cox and Chris Willis, Drs Matt Crump, John Crosby and Chris Arthur) and Biological Science (Drs Colin Lazarus and Andy Bailey). They have developed an international reputation for their work on all aspects of the chemistry and biosynthesis of polyketide metabolites.

Figure 1. Some typical fungal and bacterial polyketide metabolites.

Polyketides are a group of natural products that have found widespread use in human and veterinary medicine, and agriculture.  Examples (Figure 1) include: erythromycin from the bacterium Saccharopolyspora erythrae, a potent broad spectrum antibiotic; lovastatin from the fungus Aspergillus terreus, an effective cholesterol lowering agent; avermectin from the bacterium Streptomyces avermitilis, the most widely used antiparasitic in animal husbandry; rapamycin from the bacterium Streptomyces hygroscopicus an immuno-suppressant which is central to therapeutic approaches to the problem of rejection in organ transplantation, and which is also being developed as an anti-cancer agent; and strobilurin from the fungus Bolinea lutea, a naturally occurring antifungal agent and the inspiration for the development of one of the most widely used classes of antifungal agrochemicals. The value of such compounds amounts to billions of pounds annually.