Toby Athersuch

Research Interests:
Analytical techniques / chemical carcinogeneis and cancer biology / xenobiotic metabolism /  computational chemistry / statistical total correlation spectroscopy (STOCSY).

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate working on the EU Sixth Framework Programme Project carcinoGENOMICS.

The principal aim of the carcinoGENOMICS project is to develop in vitro assays as an alternative to the current chronic rodent bioassay for assessing the genotoxic and carcinogenic potential of chemicals. As part of this work, the Department of Biomolecular Medicine at Imperial College London has taken the role of generating metabolic profile data describing sample sets provided by in vitro workpackages focusing on liver, kidney and lung cell systems.

The project will include profiling of cell growth media and cell extracts using NMR and LC-MS based analytical platforms. This will give insight into the endogenous changes caused by exposure to chemical carcinogens in a range of cell lines. A major part of the analytical work will be assessing the metabolic competence of the in vitro systems – important as genotoxicity of numerous compounds is rely on metabolic activation.

My personal role in the project will focus on the analytical work associated with the metabonomics workpackage and to ensure that robust, high throughput metabolic profiling protocols are in place to best characterise sample sets. I will be working closely with Dr. Rachel Cavill to create a rapid data analysis pipeline for NMR and LC-MS data.

In addition to investigating chemical carcinogenesis, this project will facilitate work towards the development and optimisation of advanced methods for analysis and data handling.

Postgraduate Study :

My postdoctoral position follows on from my postgraduate studies in the department while working towards my PhD, awarded in 2007. My thesis, "Analytical and chemometric investigations of congeneric substituted aniline metabolism" focused on investigating the metabolic fate of a number of substituted anilines in vivo using NMR, MS and UPLC. These studies are part of ongoing efforts to develop predictive models of metabolism.

• The existing quantitative structure-metabolism relationship for the N-acetylation and subsequent oxanilic acid formation of substituted anilines has been improved.
• The metabolism of several substituted anilines was investigated using high resolution NMR spectroscopy and UPLC-ToF/MS to probe biofluid composition.
• Stable isotopic labels were incorporated in two of the dosed compounds, and the utility of this approach in differentiating signals from endogenous and xenobiotic origin demonstrated. Such approaches may have an impact in metabonomic studies.

Working within Biomolecular Medicine has given me the opportunity to become familiar with numerous experimental and data analysis techniques. I have been fortunate to have gained experience in multinuclear NMR (¹H, ¹³C, ¹⁵N, ¹⁹F), UPLC/ToF-MS, radiolabel balance procedures, radioflow profiling, multivariate analysis and statistical spectroscopy.

Supervision during my PhD at Imperial College was led by Prof. Jeremy Nicholson and Prof. John Lindon. I received additional supervision and advice from Prof. Ian Wilson (department of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics) at AstraZeneca, who provided a CASE award to augment my BBSRC funding.

Undergraduate Study:

I studied as an undergraduate at Exeter University in the Department of Chemistry. I was awarded a first-class honours degree in Biological and Medicinal Chemistry upon graduating in 2002.

Recent Awards:
Poster presentation prize – carcinoGENOMICS 1st Annual Meeting (Imperial).

Wiley Journal of Labelled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals Young Scientists Award 2006 (Imperial).

Henderson Ross Prize for Best Graduate in Biological and Medicinal Chemistry 2002 (Exeter).
Affinity Prize for Best Project in Biological and Medicinal Chemistry 2002 (Exeter).