Professor
Peter Roy
Molecular Genetics
PhD
Location
Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomedical Research
Address
160 College Street, Room 1202, Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 3E1
Research Interests
Bacterial and fungal pathogens, Bioinformatics and computational biology, C. elegans, Developmental biology, Disease models, Drug discovery, design, development and screening, Functional genomics and systems biology, Genome analysis and sequencing, Global health, Parasites, Infectious disease and microbiology, Mass spectrometry, Technology development, Yeast
Peter’s lab at the University of Toronto is focused on developing new drug leads and environmentally safe pesticide lead molecules.
Briefly, projects in the lab include:
- PEXIL™ Technology: Peter’s group has recently developed a new, high-throughput, massively paralleled drug and pesticide screening technology called PEXIL™.
- Parasitic Prodrugs: The Roy Lab has discovered a suite of antiparasitic small molecule scaffolds that are bioconverted by the parasites into lethal products.
- Novel Neuromodulatory Nematicides: The Roy Lab has developed a new pipeline that reveals small-molecule disruptors of motor behaviour in nematodes. One scaffold that resulted from this pipeline is Nementin™, which induces convulsions, paralysis and death through massive neurotransmitter release in nematodes.
- Candidate Drugs to Treat PFIC3 Liver Disease: Peter’s lab has established a new nematode model of PFIC3 disease and has identified candidate drugs that suppress the worm’s defects. Work is ongoing to understand how these molecules suppress the PFIC3 model and their utility in treating a mouse model of the disease.
- Amyloid Disruptors: Over 50 human diseases have amyloid formation as their root cause, including Parkinson’s, ALS, scrapie, and Huntington’s. Peter’s group has developed a nematode-based pipeline that yields molecules capable of disrupting amyloid formation.