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Lecture to outline chemistry’s war on cancer

October 19, 2006

Glover.thumb.jpgA public lecture in Armidale next week will explain how chemicals can initiate cancer, and explore the role of chemistry in traditional and modern cancer treatments.

Stephen Glover (pictured here), a Professor of Chemistry at The University of New England, has devoted much of his research activity to fundamental questions of drug design. “Considering the staggering number of possibilities,” he says, “surely there are chemical treatments for all diseases – including cancer – waiting to be discovered.” Professor Glover’s lecture will outline ways in which new drugs are discovered.

Titled “Chemicals, cancer, causes and cures”, the lecture will be in Armidale Town Hall at 7.30 pm on Wednesday 25 October. Entry is free, and everyone is welcome.

“The talk will highlight examples of how manufacturing industry and drug discovery programs have revealed the roles that natural, synthetic, and even food-based chemicals play in the initiation of cancer,” he says.

“Often it is our own metabolism that makes a chemical hazardous. However, in the case of cancer treatments, there is a peculiar contradiction in that many of the drugs used in contemporary cancer chemotherapy resemble chemicals that have been found to cause genetic damage leading to cancer. The talk will outline our discovery, at UNE, of an exciting new class of molecules that damage DNA and that might, one day, find applications in the treatment of disease.”

Professor Glover, whose education and early career in chemistry were in South Africa, joined UNE’s Department of Chemistry as a lecturer in 1985. Next week’s “Inaugural Lecture” celebrates his recent promotion to the position of Professor within UNE’s School of Biological, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences.

The recipient of a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Professor Glover’s research interests span biological, synthetic, physical and computational organic chemistry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.

UNE Spring Lecture Series 2006. On Tuesday 24 October - the day before Professor Glover's lecture - UNE will present another free public lecture in Armidale Town Hall. Professor Peter Gregg's Inaugural Lecture, titled "The Australian cotton industry and its pests: past, present and future", will begin at 6 pm. (Full report in previous posting.)

Posted by Jim Scanlan at October 19, 2006 10:29 AM