Professor Tim Gallagher, in collaboration with Professor Adrian Mulholland (School of Chemistry) and Dr Richard Sessions (School of Biochemistry), will use a combination of synthetic chemistry, computational modelling, structural biology and pharmacology to develop potential new smoking cessation agents.

Tobacco smoking is a global killer on a huge scale. There are 1.25 billion smokers worldwide, 50 per cent of whom will die from smoking-related disease if they continue to smoke.  Many want to quit.

Effective smoking cessation aids would prevent millions of premature deaths and reduce the huge burden of smoking-related illness. There is enormous demand for effective, safe and cheap smoking cessation therapies.

Professor Mulholland said: “This project will explore promising new compounds for smoking cessation.  We will work directly with industrial partners who will provide expertise and testing.  This provides a direct route to developing new smoking cessation therapies and bringing these new discoveries to market.”

The project, 'Nicotinic Ligand Development to Target Smoking Cessation and Gain a Molecular Level Understanding of Partial Agonism', runs for three years.