chemistry

Stephen Neidle

Stephen Neidle is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stephen Neidle rather than just read about it. In short: Professor Stephen Neidle is a British X-ray crystallographer, chemist and drug designer working at the UCL School of Pharmacy. His area of scientific research has been in nucleic acid structure and recognition, and the research topic of quadruplexes.

Key takeaways

Stephen Neidle belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stephen Neidle to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stephen Neidle from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Professor Stephen Neidle is a British X-ray crystallographer, chemist and drug designer working at the UCL School of Pharmacy. His area of scientific research has been in nucleic acid structure and recognition, and the research topic of quadruplexes.

Early life, education and career Stephen Neidle was born in London and educated at Hendon County Grammar School. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry, a Ph.D. in X-ray crystallography supervised by Donald Rogers (during which he solved the structure of streptomycin). and a D.Sc. in 1995, all from Imperial College London. He received an ICI Fellowship for X-ray crystallographic studies with Michael B. Hursthouse at Queen Mary University of London working on natural products and pyrrole-based compounds. Subsequently he moved to the Biophysics Department, King's College London to work on the single crystal X-ray structures of nucleic acid and nucleic acid-drug complexes and was awarded a CRC (now CRUK) Career Development Award while being a Senior Research Fellow at King's College London. He moved to the Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton as a CRC (now CRUK) Life Fellow to head the Biomolecular Structure Unit, working on anticancer drug development, on the study of their complexes with nucleic acid and protein targets of clinical importance. This work lead to a high-resolution structure of a DNA quadruplex and structural studies on protein-drug complexes, such as that of diaphorase with CB1954 (ChesterBeatty 1954), an anticancer prodrug. Neidle was appointed to the Chair of Biophysics at ICR in 1990, and then made Academic Dean 1997–2002. He later moved to Institute of Cancer Research, Fulham Road and subsequently to the first Chair of Chemical Biology at UCL School of Pharmacy. He is now Emeritus Professor of Chemical Biology at the University College London and CRUK Professorial Fellow.

Research Neidle has worked in the area of academic drug discovery and has been heavily involved in the development of drugs which recognise DNA. One of the anticancer drugs which he has been involved in developing has been abiraterone, which is used in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. More recently he and his collaborators played a key role in the design of a novel antibiotic, ridinilazole, which has recently been assessed in phase III clinical trials for the treatment of Clostridioides difficile infections. His current research interests centre on the development of novel therapeutic agents using fundamental aspects of the chemistry and biology of nucleic acid structure and its recognition by small molecules, using this to computationally design improved drugs with enhanced specificity. He has led in the study of G-quadruplex nucleic acids as therapeutic targets, especially focussing on their structure and recognition, using structural, chemical and biological approach in an integrated multidisciplinary approach. Most recently his research group has designed several compounds showing high activity in vitro and in vivo against human cancers, in particular pancreatic cancer. UCL Business have been instrumental in licensing these new experimental drugs in January 2022. These are being developed by Qualigen Therapeutics Inc in San Diego. In January 2023 the USA Food and Drug Administration approved the lead compound QN-302 for Orphan Drug designation in pancreatic cancer. In July 2023 Qualigen Therapeutics Inc received IND clearance from the FDA to initiate a Phase 1 clinical trial of QN-302 for the treatment of advanced or metastatic solid tumors. Neidle has published over 500 papers and reviews, 14 patents, edited nine books and has written four books on nucleic acid structure, drug-DNA interactions and cancer drug discovery. His current h-index is 120 (Google Scholar). He was European editor of Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters and became its editor-in-chief 2019-2021.

Family Neidle is Jewish. He is married to Andrea, a copywriter. His children include Dan Neidle, formerly head of UK tax at Clifford Chance.

Honours and awards Neidle has received various national and international awards for his work, including:

2022 Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters published a Stephen Neidle Honour issue 2011 Distinguished Lecturer, Baptist University of Hong Kong 2011 The Kelland Lecturer 2008 Royal Society of Chemistry Sosnovsky Award for cancer therapy. 2006 Visiting Professor, La Sapienza University of Rome 2005 The Guggenheim Lecturer, University of Reading 2004 Prix Paul Ehrlich, Societé de Chimie Thérapeutique, France 2002 Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Award. 2000 Biological and Medicinal Sector Prize, Royal Society of Chemistry

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stephen Neidle

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stephen Neidle claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stephen Neidle before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stephen Neidle ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stephen Neidle

In research: Stephen Neidle appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stephen Neidle in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stephen Neidle is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Alumni of Imperial College London, British cancer researchers, British chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stephen Neidle outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Stephen Neidle in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stephen Neidle means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stephen Neidle out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stephen Neidle in simple terms?

Why does Stephen Neidle matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stephen Neidle?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stephen Neidle.