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About Us

Rohan Davis

Rohan Davis

Positions

  • Group Leader, Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery, Griffith University

Contact Details

Qualifications

BSc(Hons) PhD MRACI CChem

Biography

A/Prof Davis was awarded his PhD degree in organic chemistry during 2001 and has 88 publications in the fields of natural products and medicinal chemistry. During both his industry-funded (AstraZeneca, Wyeth, Actelion, Creative Antibiotics, Pfizer) and academic (Griffith University, University of Utah, The University of Melbourne) research he has been involved in the isolation and structure elucidation of over 1000 natural products from biota sources that include plants, fungi and marine invertebrates. Several of these small molecules are currently being evaluated for their potential as lead compounds, and medicinal chemistry programs have been initiated.

For the past 5 years A/Prof Davis' research has been primarily focused on the identification of new anti-cancer and anti-infective agents from nature. His research group at the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery currently consists of 5 PhD students and 1 post-doctoral fellow.

Top publications

  • Davis RA, Carroll AR, Andrews K, Boyle G, Tran T, Kalaitzis J, Healy PC, Shivas R. Pestalactams A-C: Novel caprolactams from the endophytic fungus Pestalotiopsis sp. Org. Biomol. Chem. 2010, 8, 1785-1790. 
  • Healy PC, Hocking A, Tran-Dinh N, Pitt JI, Shivas RG, Mitchell JK, Kotiw M. Davis RA. Xanthones from a microfungus of the genus Xylaria. Phytochemistry 2004, 65, 2373-2378. 
  • Barnes EC, Choomuenwai V, Andrews K, Quinn RJ, Davis RA. Design and synthesis of screening libraries based on the muurolane natural product scaffold. Org. Biomol. Chem. 2012, 10, 4015-4023. 
  • Choomuenwai V, Andrews K, Davis RA. Synthesis and antimalarial evaluation of a   screening library based on a tetrahydroanthraquinone natural product scaffoldBioorg. Med. Chem. 2012, 20, 7167-7174. 
  • Davis RA, Longden J, Avery VM, Healy PC. The isolation, structure determination and cytotoxicity of the new fungal metabolite, trichodermamide C. Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 2008, 18, 2836-2839.

Team