James Redman

Dr. James Redman is a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Biology at Cardiff University's School of Chemistry, where he has been a faculty member since 2006. His research focuses on the synthesis of amino acids with heterocyclic side chains designed as building blocks for nucleic acid-binding peptides, constrained analogues of arginine, backbone cyclization of peptides, and computer-aided interpretation of mass spectra.

Dr. Redman completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2000 under Professor J.K.M. Sanders, focusing on the self-assembly of porphyrins. He subsequently held a Wellcome Trust Travelling Research Fellowship (2000-2003), was a Research Fellow at the Scripps Research Institute (2000-2002) with Professor M.R. Ghadiri working on protein design and mass spectrometry of cyclic peptides, and served as a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge (2002-2006) with Professor S. Balasubramanian studying recognition of guanine quadruplexes.

His research program centers on understanding molecular forces to design synthetic compounds that interact with biological targets and to redesign natural biomolecules for new functions. Key research areas include protein engineering using phage display to select allosteric DNA binding proteins for creating artificial transcription factors, development of synthetic small molecule ligands for folded nucleic acids, and computer-assisted mass spectrometric structure determination of combinatorial library products.

Analysis of Dr. Redman's publication record from 2001-2024 reveals a progression from fundamental chemical synthesis to increasingly applied biomedical research. His recent work demonstrates strong interdisciplinary connections between organic chemistry, biochemistry, and medical diagnostics, with particular emphasis on developing detection methods for disease biomarkers and creating novel chemical tools for studying biological systems.

Dr. Redman teaches multiple courses including Chemistry of Organic Compounds, Chemical Biology II, Biomolecular Chemistry, Chemical Biology III, Organic Chemistry 2, Medicinal Chemistry, and courses on the Biosynthetic Approach to Natural Products. His laboratory maintains an interdisciplinary approach combining synthetic organic chemistry, biophysical methods, molecular biology techniques, and computational analysis to address complex problems at the chemistry-biology interface.