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Staff Profile

Dr Oliver Russell

Lecturer in Mitochondrial Drug Discovery

  • Email: oliver.russell@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: 0191 208 6291
  • Address: Mitochondrial Research Group
    4th flr. Catherine Cookson Building
    Medical School
    Newcastle University
    Framlington Place
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE2 4HH
Background

I am a Lecturer in Mitochondrial Therapeutics at the Translational and Clinical Research Institute at Newcastle University. My academic journey has been rooted here in Newcastle, where I completed my BSc in Pharmacology in 2009 and my PhD in Mitochondrial Biology in 2014, before spending nearly a decade advancing my work as a Research Associate and Senior Research Associate.


Throughout my career I have sought to develop novel, high-throughput screening technologies to enable the identification of small molecule therapeutics. Initially this focused on the identification of therapies for mitochondrial disease, however these techniques have now been applied to rare neurological diseases and metabolic vulnerabilities in cancers. This work has been supported by international collaborations including Novartis, SME's and the Scripps Institute.

 



Area of expertise

Drug discovery

Mitochondrial biology

Quantification of mitochondrial function

High-throughput screening assay development




Qualifications

PhD Newcastle University

Mres Newcastle University 

BSc (Hons) Pharmacology, Newcastle University  

Google scholar: Click here.


 

 

Research

Research Interests



  1. Identifying and developing novel therapeutics to improve mitochondrial function. Increasing mitochondrial function is key to improving the lives of patients with primary mitochondrial diseases, however this work also has broad applicability in neurological diseases where mitochondrial dysfunction is a secondary phenotype. This work is underpinned by the development of novel high-throughput screening technologies to identify small molecule mitochondrial activators. In collaboration with medicinal chemistry colleagues, this work is progressing towards pre-clinical in vivo investigations.
  2. Development of screening techniques to identify therapeutic targets for rare diseases. Using advanced cell models (differentiated iPSC) and model cell lines (U2OS, HeLa, HEK293), we develop screenable assays to identify phenotypic changes in disease vs controls. Using CRISPR we identify genes that can correct disease phenotypes, thus identifying novel drug targets which we exploit with structural biology and medicinal chemistry colleagues.


NE-BRIDGE

NE-BRIDGE is a platform developed by myself and colleagues at Newcastle University with local business partners to address key challenges and bottlenecks in the development of small molecule therapeutics for rare diseases. For more information please see: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/who-we-are/strategy/strengths/ageing-health/rare-diseases/. Please contact me for more information or potential collaboration.


Teaching

Undergraduate


Lecturer: CMB3011

Module Co-lead: BMD1004, BMD3017


Postgraduate


Lecturer: MMB5059


Publications