Professor Donald CairnsProf. Cairns leads the strategic planning, coordination, development and supervision of academic work at the School of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, the largest of four Schools within the Faculty of Health and Social Care.
Don is Professor of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry and has authored over 70 peer reviewed research papers. He has been external examiner at Strathclyde, Liverpool, Aberdeen, Keele and Belfast Schools of Pharmacy in the UK. His research interests include the design and synthesis of selective anti-cancer agents, the molecular modelling of drug / DNA interactions and the design of prodrugs for the treatment of nephropathic cystinosis.
Prof. Cairns is a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. In 2006 he was appointed to the British Pharmacopoeia Commission and has served on an Expert Advisory Group of the Commission on Human Medicines. In 2008, Prof. Cairns was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and in 2015 was made Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
Key research interests include:
- The design and synthesis of novel prodrugs for the treatment of nephropathic cystinosis
- The design and synthesis of amino-substituted anthraquinones and quinoxalines as selective ligands for higher order DNA (mainly triplex and tetraplex) and as inhibitors of telomerase
- Molecular modelling of drug-macromolecule interactions
