AI-Guided Evolution of High-Functional Synthetic Proteins for Therapeutic Applications

Project ID: 2531ad1528

(You will need this ID for your application)

UCL Lead department: Division of Surgery and Interventional Sciences

Project Summary:

Synthetic therapeutic proteins have the potential to transform healthcare by addressing genetic disorders and diseases with enhanced precision. With modern technologies we have the capacity to design and synthesise biologics that do not exist in the natural world.

However, real-world application of these technologies can be hindered by immune reactions and instability of the novel products. This project aims to solve these challenges by harnessing rapid growth in AI and machine learning tools for designing and evolving synthetic proteins with enhanced stability and tolerability.

The project will be based in the Research Department of Targeted Intervention, under the supervision of Dr John Counsell, in his synthetic biology laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art DNA synthesis platforms and vector technologies. The project is part of a broader collaborative program aimed at advancing synthetic biologics, offering opportunities to work with experts in cutting-edge computational and experimental techniques.

You will develop and apply AI pipelines to design synthetic proteins, integrating computational methods with wet lab experiments to validate and refine your designs. The overall aim will be to develop tools that could be applied to any area of healthcare. But for the PhD, your work will focus on exemplifying the pipeline to build synthetic proteins for treatment of muscular dystrophy, balancing stability and reduced immunogenicity. This will involve training machine learning models, analyzing protein structure-function relationships, and conducting basic experiments to validate therapeutic potential.

We are looking for a motivated and creative individual with a background in machine learning, structural biology, bioinformatics, or a related field. If you are excited by the prospect of working at the intersection of AI and biotechnology to tackle real-world challenges, we encourage you to apply.