Dr Alan M Jones PhD, BSc (Hons), MRSC, PGCert, FHEA

Dr Alan Jones

School of Pharmacy
Associate Professor in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry

Contact details

Address
Institute of Clinical Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr Alan Jones is an Associate Professor in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the School of Pharmacy in the Institute of Clinical Sciences. His research interests focus on the application of synthetic and medicinal chemistry to solve challenges at the intersection of biology and drug discovery for patient benefit. Key topics include:

  • The development of advanced, novel drug molecules for the treatment of leukaemia.
  • The investigation of electrochemical methods as an enabling technology to identify drug metabolites
  • The use of chemical, pharmacological and adverse drug reaction large datasets to identify and predict drug liabilities in the patient populations
  • The use of our commercialised reagent, tributylsulfoammonium betaine (TBSAB) for advanced sulfation studies (https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/GB/en/product/aldrich/911992 and https://store.apolloscientific.co.uk/product/tributylsulfoammonium-betaine)
  • Alan leads on several Senior Institute, College and University roles to enhance good governance within the University:
  • Chair of the Institute of Clinical Sciences Health & Safety Committee.
  • College Chemical Safety Officer
  • MDS Health and Safety Management Committee (HSMC) member
  • MDS lead for the University’s Health & Safety Advisory Group (UHSAG)

Alan has a wealth of experience of teaching and external examining at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Qualifications

Associate Professor in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry:

  •  Certificate in External Examining 2023
  • PG Cert 2016
  • FHEA 2016
  • Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2009
  • Ph.D. (St Andrews), 2009
  • BSc. Hons (Aberdeen), 2005

Teaching

Postgraduate supervision

Synthetic organic chemistry
Electrosynthetic Green Chemistry
Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Other activities

External expert/ Grant Reviewer (UK):

  • British Council Newton Fund
  • EPSRC
  • Rosetrees Trust
  • KidScan Cancer charity
  • Parkinson’s UK
  • University of Bradford
  • Oxford University Press

External expert/ Grant Reviewer (International)

  • External Reviewer for University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2016-present)
  • External Reviewer for Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale, France (2018-present).
  • Poland National Science Council, Warsaw (2022-present).
  • Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, KSA (2023-present)

Journal Peer Reviewer

ACS, RSC, Wiley and Elsevier journal titles including:

  • Chemical Communications
  • Chemistry A European Journal
  • Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis
  • ChemSusChem
  • Journal of Organic Chemistry
  • ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

Editorial roles

Molecules MDPI – Organic Chemistry section editor 2019-2022

External PhD examiner

  • University of Nottingham (UK)
  • University of Cardiff (UK)
  • Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)

External UG programme examiner

  • University of Cardiff (Wales, UK) 2022-2026
  • University of Sunderland (England, UK) 2020-2024

Consultancy / Knowledge Transfer roles

  • Novartis
  • Merck Sigma-Aldrich
  • Apollo Scientific

Societies

Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC)

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Zhou, Y & Jones, AM 2024, 'A general method to access underexplored ylideneamino sulfates as interrupted Beckmann-type rearrangement intermediates', Molecules, vol. 29, no. 7, 1667. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules29071667

Ugurlu, SY, McDonald, D, Lei, H, Jones, AM, Li, S, Tong, HY, Butler, MS & He, S 2024, 'Cobdock: an accurate and practical machine learning-based consensus blind docking method', Journal of Cheminformatics, vol. 16, no. 1, 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-023-00793-x

Sidgwick, GP, Weston, R, Mahmoud, AM, Serracino-inglott, F, Mahesh Tandel, S, Skeoch, S, Bruce, IN, Jones, AM, Alexander, MY & Wilkinson, FL 2024, 'Novel Glycomimetics Protect Against Glycated Low-Density Lipoprotein-Induced Vascular Calcification In Vitro by Attenuation of the RAGE/ERK/CREB Pathway', Cells, vol. 13, no. 4, 312. https://doi.org/10.3390/cells13040312

Zhou, Y & Jones, AM 2024, 'Rearrangement of Arylsulfamates and Sulfates To Para-Sulfonyl Anilines and Phenols', Molecules, vol. 29, no. 7, 1445. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules29071445

Asra, R & Jones, AM 2023, 'Green electrosynthesis of drug metabolites', Toxicology Research, pp. 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1093/toxres/tfad009

Zazeri, G, Ribeiro Povinelli, A, Pavan, NM, Ximenes, VF & Jones, AM 2023, 'Solvent-induced Lag-phase on the Formation of Lysozyme Amyloid Fibrils Triggered by SDS: Biophysical Experimental and in Silico Study of Solvent Effects', Molecules, vol. 28, no. 19, 6891. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28196891

Povinelli, APR, Zazeri, G, Jones, AM & Cornélio, ML 2022, 'A computational–experimental investigation of the molecular mechanism of interleukin-6-piperine interaction', International Journal of Molecular Sciences, vol. 23, no. 14, 7994. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23147994

Other contribution

Ghumra, A (ed.), Acil, N, Barker, J, Baziotis, C, Beltran Hernandez, A, Dai, D, Deakin, J, Dettmer, S, Fentham, D, Fontrodona-Bach, A, Hart-Villamil, R, Jenkins, B, Jia, X, Jones, AM, Morris, A, Murakami, A, Seymour, R, Da Silva Xavier, G, Smith, C, Tashev, S, Turner, J, Uche, EO, Xia, X & Zhong, J 2023, Birmingham Environment for Academic Research: Case studies volume 3. University of Birmingham. https://doi.org/10.25500/epapers.bham.00004303

Preprint

Xie, J, Male, L & Jones, AM 2024 'A modified all-in-one DMSO-activating and base releasing reagent for the Parikh-Doering-type benzylic oxidation reaction' ChemRxiv. https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2024-sscbn

Alshehri, J & Jones, A 2024 'Approaches to the Sulfation of Small Molecules: Current Progress and Future Directions' ChemRxiv. https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2024-26pv5

Asra, R, Povinelli, APR, Zazeri, G & Jones, AM 2024 'Computational Predictive and Electrochemical Detection of Metabolites (CP-EDM) of Piperine' ChemRxiv. https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2024-4lt9w

Asra, R, Malmakova, A & Jones, AM 2024 'Electrochemical Synthesis of the in human S-oxide metabolites of phenothiazine containing Anti-Psychotic Medications' ChemRxiv, pp. 1-22. https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2024-32xrs

Yousaf, H & Jones, AM 2024 'The Relationship Between Suspected Adverse Drug Reactions Of HMG-Coa Reductase Inhibitors And Polypharmacology Using A National Registry Approach' medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.02.24305224

Phillips, B, Evans, I, Skerrett, V & Jones, AM 2024 'United Kingdom National Register Study of Anti-Epileptic Medications: Suspected Foetal Congenital And Pregnancy-Associated Side Effects' medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.26.24304895

Zhou, Y & Jones, AM 2022 'A Sulfonative rearrangement of N-aryl sulfamates to para-sulfonyl anilines' ChemRxiv. https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2022-jc55l

View all publications in research portal