Biomolecular engineering

Research topics

The biomolecular engineering group is focused on the development of novel peptides and proteins for biomedical and biotechnological applications. Peptides and proteins are engineered using in vitro directed evolution approaches. Phage and yeast surface display techniques are used to select molecules with desired qualities from large combinatorial libraries. Engineered properties include: binding affinity and specificity, molecular size, solubility and stability. Fine tuned molecules are further produced and characterized experimentally using a broad range of analytical methodologies across multiple disciplines such as molecular, chemical and structural biology. The ultimate goal of our research efforts is the development of state- of-the-art peptides and proteins with a novel mechanism of action that have the potential to overcome the limitations of current biomedical and biotechnological applications. Our research covers a broad range of techniques across multiple disciplines including molecular and structural biology, chemical biology and pharmacology. The team is currently interested in the following research areas:

Multispecific proteins for cancer immunotherapy

Cancer is a multifactorial disease that usually involves multiple ligands and receptors acting in concert. As a result, therapies targeting a single pathological molecule are often insufficient to achieve desired clinical outcomes. To overcome this limitation, we apply directed evolution approaches to engineer multispecific proteins capable of blocking multiple targets.

Chemically modified peptides for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases

Cyclic peptides are able to bind a diverse set of target proteins and often display high stability and low off-target toxicity, making them an attractive molecule format for the development of next-generation therapeutics. We are currently applying directed evolution approaches to engineering novel post-translational chemically modified cyclic peptides for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases.

Fundamental principles of molecular evolution

The data acquired through the directed evolution of peptides and proteins offer us the opportunity to answer questions about fundamental principles that govern molecular recognition. Toward this goal we are currently applying next-generation sequencing and complementary biochemical and biophysical techniques to dissect the evolutionary pathways and characterise the properties of the engineered biomolecules.