Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Steroid Drug Discovery and Development focuses on the targeted drug design as well as pharmacology/toxicology study of steroids aiming to provide new intervention strategies for various human diseases.

The director of the laboratory is Prof. Bao-Ting Zhu, a Presidential Chair Professor at CUHK-Shenzhen. All senior members of our laboratory have extensive oversea study and research experiences. Our laboratory has been awarded a number of grants from multiple funding agencies, which include Key and General Programs from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Shenzhen Peacock Team Project, Shenzhen Key and General Programs from Shenzhen municipal government

Research Directions

Structural Biology of Drug Target Proteins

Currently, life science has entered the post genomics era, and structural biology is of crucial importance. Detailed and precise three-dimensional structures of proteins are the foundation for targeted drug design. Our laboratory has access to a state-of-art cryo-electron microscopy research platform, which enables us to analyze a wide range of drug target proteins and their protein complexes.

Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD)

With the rapid development of computation techniques in recent years, computational chemistry/biology has become indispensable for innovative drug discovery. High throughput in silico screening can greatly accelerate the process of drug development, and drastically reduce the cost of lead compound identification in the early discovery stage. Equipped with the high performance computational infrastructure, our laboratory can conduct various calculations such as molecular docking analysis, molecular simulation, molecular dynamics calculation, quantum mechanical calculation, etc., which further enables us to accurately predict the interaction between target proteins and small molecules.

Medicinal Chemistry

Medicinal chemistry synthesizes new chemical entities, studies the structure-activity relationship of small molecules, and elucidates chemical properties of drugs. It is the integral part of drug discovery and pharmaceutical sciences. Our laboratory will combine the use of classic organic synthesis strategies as well as computational approaches to design and synthesize a series of lead compounds.

Pharmacology and Pharmaceutics

Pharmacology studies the activity of drugs, and pharmaceutics optimizes formulation of drugs in order to improve their therapeutic efficacy. Our laboratory will perform pharmacodynamic studies (mainly on drug effects and their mechanism of action), pharmacokinetic studies (primarily on drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion), and explore the use of various novel drug carriers (such as nano-particles, hydrogels and targeting carriers) in drug development.