Professor Ross Bathgate
BSc (Hons) PhD
Group Head
Location
Parkville Campus
30 Royal Parade
Parkville Victoria 3052
Research group
Neuropeptide Receptor Group
Biography
Professor Ross Bathgate is the co-leader of the Discovery Science Theme at The Florey and is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne.
His lab focuses on understanding the interactions of peptide ligands with their G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) targets for the development of peptide-based drugs and utilising structure-based drug design to develop novel therapeutics. He has authored over 250 publications, including many reviews on the relaxin family of peptides and their GPCRs. Peptides of the relaxin family show enormous therapeutic potential, particularly the peptide hormone relaxin, which has recently been utilised in Phase III clinical trials for the treatment of acute heart failure.
Ross works closely with a number of pharmaceutical companies interested in the clinical development of relaxin, as well as other pharmaceutical companies interested in drugs targeting other peptide GPCRs.
Career highlights
Research projects
- Developing H2 relaxin analog – B7-33 – as antifibrotic therapy
- Developing H3 relaxin analogs to treat pain
- Developing INSL5 analogs as colon motility regulator
- Targeting peptide G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) for novel drug development
- A new chemogenetic method that enables functional neural circuit analysis