Congratulations to PhD students Thomas Jackson and Sarah Hassan on winning prizes for their talks

This year's postgraduate symposium showcased many talks and posters across different research themes. This was the first in-person annual symposium since the pandemic. Thomas and Sarah were awarded first and second place for their talks in the Chemical Biology and Healthcare theme. Below are short abstracts of thier PhD projects.

Thomas Jackson

This PhD project has been related to methodology development, to enable the identification of light-dependent cyclic peptides as chemical biology tools against traditionally challenging drug targets. This has been achieved via the modification and screening of cyclic peptide libraries to identify novel ‘molecular switch’ chemical probes against a proof-of-concept protein target. Thomas is co-supervised by Dr Louise Walport and Prof. Matt Fuchter.

Sarah Hassan

Prenylation, a subtype of protein lipidation, is liable to a unique and understudied phenomenon that is almost exclusive to a subset of Ras oncogenes, where proteins resist therapeutic intervention at the level of protein lipidation by switching their prenylation status. Sarah is developing new drug resistance-driven CRISPR screening technologies, in tandem with chemical proteomics, to deconvolute the mechanism of prenylation switching. Understanding these 'switch' dynamics may help in the identification of novel druggable vulnerabilities in cancer. Sarah holds the presitgious President's Scholarship.

Well done to both Thomas and Sarah!