Dr
Darren
Fayne
Academic biography
Dr Darren Fayne holds a degree in Applied Chemistry and PhD in computational and organic chemistry from Dublin City University. He has an M.Ed. in Higher Education from Trinity College Dublin. He worked for two years at Solvay Pharmaceuticals in Hannover, Germany as a molecular designer from March 2003. While with the Computer-Aided Drug Design Group he focused on two main therapeutic areas of research: Cardiovascular disease and Gastroenterology (IBS/IBD). In July 2005 Darren joined the Molecular Design Group in Trinity College Dublin as a Senior Research Fellow. He started as an Assistant Professor in Computational Chemistry in DCU in 2024.
In the late 2000’s, he co-founded and served as a director of a rational drug design campus spin-out company to commercialise intellectual property and develop compounds for the treatment of an orphan cancer – malignant pleural mesothelioma.
Research interests
His research focus is the rational computational design of novel small molecular modulators of key disease related proteins. Nuclear receptors are a major research interest of his, as is the development of computational tools to assist the drug discovery process. A key aspect of his work is forming a bridge between chemistry & biology and utilising computational design methodologies to collaboratively discovery novel small molecules with the potential to treat human disease. More recently he has collaborated with colleagues to identify novel small molecule inhibitors of IL-17A (inflammation/autoimmune), LspA (Anti-bacterial) and Vif (Anti-viral). To date he has successfully filed two patents, published ~50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and one book chapter.
His molecular design group (MDG) currently consists of three PhD candidates and one IRC funded postdoctoral researcher.