Professor John F. Gilmer

Pharmaceutical Chemistry

Prof. John F. Gilmer Ph.D
Professor
Email: gilmerjf@tcd.ie
Phone: +353-1-896-2795
Location: Panoz Institute, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland. TBSI and IMM, St James’s Hospital.

Head of School and Module Coordinator.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

John Gilmer is a pharmaceutical chemist with wide range of interests in drug properties, mechanism, and discovery. He obtained his PhD in bile acid chemistry at TCD in 1995 and worked for several years in drug development with Unimed PLC, a pharmaceutical R&D company based in TCD and QUB. John’s principal current research interest is in membrane destabilising effects of bile acids and how that might be modulated to achieve pro- or anti-apoptotic results. He is investigating related mechanisms of cytoprotection by the bile acid UDCA and its application as a chemotype in the design of new ER stress modulators with potential to treat liver disease, neurodegenerative disorders and intestinal inflammation. John is also interested in the effect of redesigning drug types to prevent their uptake from the intestine after oral administration in order to confine their effects to the intestine. John’s group discovered the first true aspirin prodrugs which are being developed for the prevention of colorectal cancer metastasis. John is interested in platelet interactions with cancer cells, how that is modified by aspirin in vivo and how to model this in vitro. The discovery of the prodrug class led to the foundation of the drug development company Solvotrin Therapeutics LTD. Solvotrin was the winner of the 2010 Enterprise Ireland big ideas award for Innovation in the Life Sciences Sector.
MMP9_juw197
A structural formula of a nitrate barbiturate hybrid and a model showing it bound at the active site of MMP9, an enzyme involved in inflammation and cancer. We are interested in strategies to inhibit MMPs at enzyme and transcriptional levels.