The department's research focuses on elucidating the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying disease conditions characterised by either excessive cell death, e.g., neurodegenerative diseases (such as Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease), or impaired cell death (such as cancers), with a view to harnessing the knowledge to develop novel therapeutics that will be more efficacious and elicit less side effects in managing those conditions. The researcher uses state-of-the-art methodologies in pharmacology, physiology, biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, imaging, structural biology (through collaboration) and bioinformatics (through collaboration). He currently has collaborations with colleagues in the UK, Finland, South Africa and Nigeria.

His work is significantly translational (bench to bedside) and to some degree captures a wider context beyond cell death perturbations to assist in developing and optimising phenotypic- and target-based assays for high-throughput screening (HTS) of small molecules to identify those acting at a (druggable) molecular target of interest.

In summary, his current research interests include:

• Exploring cellular and molecular mechanisms of cell death in neurodegeneration.
• Oxidative stress (and nitrosative stress) and antioxidant signalling, including the Nrf2/ARE signalling pathway.
• Prospecting for novel anti-cancer drug leads.
• Development and optimisation of phenotypic and target-based assays for high-throughput screening (HTS) of chemical libraries (for various drug targets), HTS and compound characterisation/optimisation.
• Development of novel screening platforms and technologies, including the use of 3D cell culture models, stem cells and patient-derived cells.
• Natural products pharmacology and toxicology.
• Drug repurposing/repositioning.
• Use of fluorescent ligands to study novel pharmacology.