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Department of Pharmacology

 

A new BBSRC-funded project aims to exploit de novo designed proteins to control protein-protein interactions in new ways.

The research will use a diversity of available and new protein modules called coiled coils as scaffolds to promote non-natural protein-protein interactions.

These will be adapted in two applications: First, the disruption of endogenous protein-protein interactions to control and direct cellular processes in which they are involved. Second, the formation of entirely new protein-protein interactions to target disease-associated proteins for degradation using the natural intracellular protein degradation machinery.

The grant is worth £1.7M over 3.5 years. It will bring together Laura Itzhaki’s protein engineering lab with collaborators in chemical biology at Leeds and protein design and synthetic biology at Bristol.