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Joanna & Harriet Return from Maternity Leave

In June 2023, Joanna Bonnici and Harriet Stanway-Gordon – two of our Post Doctoral Research Associates – returned to work after maternity leave. The team is excited to have them back, and looking forward to plenty of baby photos and supporting them in balancing work and home life as parents.   Joanna:   “I’m excited to return to work to face new challenges that don’t involve changing nappies or deciphering the meaning behind my baby’s cries.”  Harriet:   “Can’t believe I’m heading back to work already – feels like only yesterday Ziggy arrived! Looking forward to getting back to some semblance of normality (although I am going to miss spending most of… Read More »Joanna & Harriet Return from Maternity Leave

MoSMed Conference 2023

On 16th and 17th May, it was once again time for the Molecular Sciences for Medicine (MoSMed) CDT annual conference. The Newcastle and Durham University students descended on St James’ Park for these two days; each year, this is a great opportunity to catch up with the rest of the cohort from both universities as well as learn about the innovative science going on in the programme. Our second year PhD students Emma and Tom presented posters showcasing their research, whilst third year PhD student Siddique gave a presentation followed by a Q&A session. The conference was also an opportunity for our early career researchers to network with industry partners,… Read More »MoSMed Conference 2023

Class of 23 MChems Finish

After months of hard work Maddy Sayers and Maia Evans have successfully completed their MChem thesis and viva in the Kawamura Group. Their work has involved investigating different roles and uses for cyclic peptides as chemical probes working with PhD students Siddique and Emma. Congratulations and well done on all your hard work, it has been a joy to work with you! We are looking forward to seeing where you go next.

Grace successfully defends her DPhil thesis!

On Monday 13 February Grace defended her DPhil thesis. She wrote a blog all about the challenges and celebrations of her PhD journey. I began my PhD in Oxford as an Oxford-GSK-Crick Chemical Biology CDT student, with 9 months training in chemical biology through taught courses and two 12-week lab placements. The lab placements were particularly helpful for broadening my skill set, allowing me to try two completely different projects. For one project I spent time at GSK working on photoreactive cyclic peptide probes, and for the other I was studying the effect of tissue stiffness on (myo)fibroblast biology using immortal and primary cell lines. I chose to work in… Read More »Grace successfully defends her DPhil thesis!

Tom Visits Novo Nordisk in Denmark

Written by: Tom Smith. From October to December 2022, I had the privilege of visiting the R&D site of Novo Nordisk in Denmark as part of the Kawamura Group’s ongoing collaboration with this pharmaceutical company. It was incredible to experience the cutting-edge science going on there; the company specialises in treating diabetes as well as a variety of other chronic illnesses, and the wealth of expertise they have onsite in peptide chemistry and many other areas was fantastic to be part of. During my placement I was able to undertake various projects including massively parallel peptide synthesis, high throughput screening assays, and DNA library sequencing analysis. As well as improving… Read More »Tom Visits Novo Nordisk in Denmark

Grace Roper presents her work at 3rd PSL Chemical Biology Symposium in Paris

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12th-13th January 2023  Grace presented her DPhil work at the 3rd PSL Chemical Biology Symposium in Paris, her poster summarised key results from her DPhil on the development of macrocyclic peptides as multifunctional probes. Thanks to Oxford Chemistry Department for providing funding. 

Emma Wins RSC CBBG Travel Grant

Emma won an RSC CBBG travel grant which enabled her to visit the lab of our collaborator Professor Frances Platt (Department of Pharmacology) in Oxford for two weeks in January 2023.   The visit enabled Emma to test her cyclic peptide compounds in next stage assay models including against mouse brain homogenates and cell lysates. This enabled cross-screening against different isoenzymes of the disease target for selectivity studies, helping accelerate hit compound progression for lysosomal disorders and neurodegenerative therapy. As well as advancing the PhD, the visit helped strengthen collaborations with a world-leading laboratory in the disease field, with future collaborative work already in place in the coming months. Image Description(… Read More »Emma Wins RSC CBBG Travel Grant

Welcome to the group Chris!

A very warm welcome to Chris Mullins, who joins the group as a PhD student as part of the Molecular Sciences for Medicine (MoSMed) CDT. Chris comes to us from Evox Therapeutics, Oxford where he specialised in the downstream purification of exosomes for rare disease indications. He graduated from The University of Warwick with an MBio in Biochemistry with Industrial Placement, during which he spent 12-months at UCB in Slough developing novel engineered antibody formats. Welcome to the group Chris!

Klem Simelis Presents his Work at RSC Chemical Biology Conference, Ireland

Earlier this week, Klem attended the RSC ChemBio conference in Ireland where he presented his DPhil work on the characterisation of TET enzyme bimodal activity, highlighting previously unappreciated poor coupling of 5-methylcytosine hydroxylase and 2-OG decarboxylase enzyme activities, which may have implications for the control of TCA cycle intermediate formation and inhibitor development. 

Welcome to the group Rob!

We are excited to welcome Dr. Rob Dawber to group as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Rob received his MChem degree at the University of Leeds in 2018. In July 2022, Rob completed his PhD at the same institute through the MRC DiMeN DTP programme, where he developed peptidomimetic inhibitors of key protein-protein interactions of the Aurora A kinase under the supervision of Prof. Richard Bayliss and Prof. Andy Wilson. Rob will be investigating lysine demethylases (KDMs) in relation to the chemistry of epigenetics and associated cancers. Welcome Rob!