NEWS FROM OUR LAB
April 2022
We are excited to share that our work on a multifunctional enzyme that catalyses conjugate reduction and reductive amination is out now in Nature!
This was a collaboration with the Grogan group at the University of York, Prozomix and Pfizer.
January 2022
Congratulations to all our final year PhD students who recently passsed their vivas – well done Joan Citoler, Vanessa Harawa, James Marshall, Ryan Palmer and Thomas Thorpe!
November 2021
Gates Foundation funding helped us develop a low cost enzymatic manufacturing route to the Covid-19 therapy Molnupiravir
The drug was recently approved for use in the UK
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59163899
Well done to Will B, Bruna and Tom. You can see the results of their work here:
PREVIOUS NEWS FROM OUR LAB
October 2021
Nicholas Turner has been elected a Member of Academia Europaea!
September 2021
Rachel and Rebecca’s review of ‘Sustainable Synthesis of Cosmetics Ingredients’ is out now in Natural Product Reports. This review really demonstrates The Beauty of Biocatalysis!
This was a fascinating topic to research and we really enjoyed writing it!
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/np/d1np00027f
September 2021
Our paper on the ‘Synthesis of Pharmaceutically Relevant 2-Aminotetralin and 3-Aminochroman Derivatives via Enzymatic Reductive Amination’ has just been accepted in Angewandte Chemie!
Well done Joan, James and Vanessa in collaboration with Prozomix and Nouron!
August 2021
Congratulations to Will Birmingham whose paper is out now in Nature Communications. This is our collaboration wih BASF and Technical University of Denmark (DTU): ‘Toward Scalable Biocatalytic Conversion of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural by Galactose Oxidase using Coordinated Reaction Engineering’
The galactose oxidase variant showed improved oxgen binding with turnover numbers of over a million!
August 2021
Congratulations to former group members Sebastian Cosgrove and Juan Mangas-Sanchez on publication of their book chapter!
The chapter is entitled ‘Application of Engineered Biocatalyts for the Synthesis of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs)’ and is published in Protein Engineering: Tools and Applications.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9783527815128.ch11
August 2021
It was great to finally see everybody face to face at our group BBQ!
July 2021
Congratulations to Becky Ruscoe who has been awarded one of five teaching internships offered by the School.
The internship allows post-docs who are planning an academic career to acquire teaching experience without having a negative impact on their research.
July 2021
We couldn’t be in Graz for Biotrans 2021 but we decided to celebrate a great conference with our own ‘last night’ event.
We even had music from the Schlossberg Terrace!
July 2021
We very much enjoyed attending Biotrans 2021, even though it was online.
Tom Thorpe gave a fascinating talk on a new activity for imine reductases – more details coming soon!
June 2021
We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded a prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry Horizon Prize.
The award is for the Discovery, Characterisation and Industrial Application of Biocatalysts for Reductive Amination Reactions and is jointly awarded to us, the Grogan group at The University of York, GSK and Prozomix.
May 2021
We welcome Ivelina Valeva to our group as our new technician for our Prosperity Partnership project.
The project is a collaboration with Prozomix and AstraZeneca. You can find out more about Ivelina on our members page!
May 2021
We’re looking forward to Biotrans 2021!
http://biotrans2021.uni-graz.at/
We can’t go to Graz but we can bring a little bit of Graz to Manchester!
April 2021
Our recent paper on continuous flow biocatalysis for cascade reactions is out!
You can read it here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.202103805
Well done to Joan, James M and Ryan. This was an excellent example of collaboration with the Flitsch group and former group members Sebastian Cosgrove and Matthew Thompson.
February 2021
Professor Nicholas Turner was interviewed on ‘In the Active Site’ podcast
As part of Biotrans 2021, the scientists who are invited to give a lecture are interviewed. You can access the podcasts here http://biotrans2021.uni-graz.at/podcast.html
February 2021
Our recent paper on ‘RetroBioCat as a computer-aided synthesis planning tool for biocatalytic reactions and cascades’ was highlighted on the cover of Nature Catalysis.
This amazing cover art was done by Verena Resch from @luminous_lab. She also designed this website!
February 2021
PhD student James Marshall presented his work at the NextGenBiocat conference
James recently published his work on screening of metagenomic IREDs in Nature Chemistry. You can read the paper here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-020-00606-w
January 2021
Better late than never!
Our review on ‘Enzymatic late-stage modifications’ is out now: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202014931
Lucian Pirvu joins our group as a Post-doctoral Research Assistant