A physicist from The University of Nottingham and a mathematical modeller from The University of Southampton are joining forces in the hope of answering a biological mystery - how do our bodies reject some of the drugs that are sent to cure us?
The £92,300 study is funded by the Medical Research Council through its 'Discipline Hopping' Awards scheme which aims to provoke new collaborations between the physical and life sciences.
For the next 12 months Dr Cyril Rauch, physicist and lecturer in the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at Nottingham will be working with Dr Giles Richardson, from the School of Mathematical Sciences in Southampton to find out why and how the molecules that oppose drug entry into cells work.
Dr Rauch said: "I am a physicist who is very interested in complex systems such as biology. We will be working at the interface of science - mathematics, physics and biology. Drugs have got to have a molecule in the body to target. But a drug has to cross all the body tissues prior to reaching its target and this is incredibly tricky and very difficult from the drug standpoint. In particular, cells have specific proteins, namely membrane transporters, that impair the transverse movement of drugs by constantly extruding them - these are their natural defence mechanism to avoid toxicity. We have previously suggested and reported that the membrane of cells is central and that basic physics may shed light on this very complex transport of drugs to their target. In due course we aim to control drugs' oral bioavailability and multi drug resistance."
Dr Richardson, whose mathematical expertise is in modelling biological and electrochemical phenomena said: "When I first heard about it I was intrigued by multidrug resistance and, in particular, by the fact that, despite there being a number of well attested properties displayed by multidrug resistant cells, there is still no consensus on the mechanisms for this strange phenomenon. Furthermore I felt that the modelling techniques that I use could play an important role in testing out hypothetical mechanisms".
Multidrug resistance is a major problem in the treatment of a variety of diseases including malaria, cancer and certain bacterial infections.