Assessment information: This part of the assessment is based on writing of a 3000 word assignment in a form of a research proposal. You are an academic scientist, who has recently discovered a new receptor. Your initial experiments suggest that this receptor is involved in the regulation of blood pressure, and also in the regulation of fat metabolism. Therefore, you hypothesised that a ligand of this receptor would be beneficial for people with hypertension and obesity. With this idea you have approached a major pharmaceutical company and put a confidentiality agreement in place. After the initial discussions, the company has expressed an interest in the idea and the receptor and would like to receive a proposal from you. Your task is to write a 3,000 word proposal to the pharmaceutical company with the following headings: Introduction (10%) This should include a literature review of recently published research papers reporting advances in treating both hypertension and obesity. The disease (10%): What is the unmet need in hypertension and obesity? Think about “two birds with one stone”; think about the market size. (The information for this section should be freely available on the internet) The receptor (15%): Give a name to your receptor and explain how it was discovered. In this section, you need to describe the role of this receptor in regulating blood pressure as well as fat metabolism. Mode of action (5%): Do you want an agonist or antagonist or partial agonist? Why? Screening (10%): Propose a screening cascade; consider using flow diagrams Candidate selection (20%): Propose critical experiments to help the company to select a candidate compound (safety, efficacy, …); propose criteria that should be present in the candidate compound (MW, logP, DMPK properties) Clinical study (15%): After the human safety study, what type of clinical efficacy study would you propose? Project plan with timelines and milestones (5%) The remaining 10% is allocated to writing style, overall presentation and referencing. Tomorrow 4pm 3000 words
