Dr Beatriz Baragana

Beatriz Baragaña is the apicomplexan portfolio leader in the Drug Discovery Unit (DDU).
Beatriz graduated with a BSc in Chemistry from University of Oviedo (Spain) and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the same university under the supervision of Prof. Barluenga. She went on to join Prof. A. P. Davies lab at Trinity College (Dublin) followed by an industrial postdoctoral position as Medicinal Chemist at Bayer AG (Wuppertal, Germany). She moved to Scotland in 2001 and joined Avecia (now Piramal Pharma) where she became a team leader working in antibody drug conjugates for the treatment of cancer. In 2007 she joined Prof. Ian H. Gilbert group at the University of Dundee.

Beatriz leads a portfolio of projects for malaria, cryptosporidiosis and schistosomiasis drug discovery. The projects in her portfolio are at various stages along the drug discovery pathway and involve an extended network of international collaborators both in industry and academia. Beatriz works closely with biologists, chemist, computational chemist, crystallographers, and pharmacologists to deliver leads and pre-clinical candidates with novel mode of actions for these infectious diseases. The most advanced compound discovered by her team, M5717 (DDD489) has recently demonstrated single dose cures of malaria infections in a Phase I clinical study. The DDU malaria team has been awarded the prestigious Medicines for Malaria Venture Project of the Year Award twice (2014 and 2018).

Research:
Key interests:
• Target based structure guided drug discovery for infectious diseases with a focus on malaria, tuberculosis, and cryptosporidiosis
• Validation of novel targets for malaria and cryptosporidiosis
• Develop selective chemical probes to improve the understating of the biology of Plasmodium and Cryptosporidium parasites and unveil new molecular targets for drug discovery
• Develop new pre-clinical candidates for malaria and cryptosporidiosis
• Develop the drug discovery pathway for schistosomiasis, including target product profiles, a drug discovery cascade, and better understanding of the PK/PD.
Publications:
https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/persons/beatriz-baragana