Prof Dek Woolfson, Director of the Bristol BioDesign Institute, has been named as one of the two recipients of the 2025 Vincent du Vigneaud Award. These prestigious awards, given by the American Peptide Society (and sponsored by Bachem), recognize outstanding achievements in peptide research at mid-career.

Dek has been honoured alongside Prof Ashraf Brik (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology). The awards will be presented at the 29th American Peptide Symposium and 15th International Peptide Symposium in California (15-19 June 2025).

Vincent du Vigneaud was an American biochemist known for his work with sulfur compounds and peptides. He won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the cyclic peptide, oxytocin.

Engineering Biology Mission Award Holders Professors Thomas Gorochowski and Christiane Berger-Schaffitzel, Aegis Professor of Engineering Biology Anike Te, and BBI Scientific Manager Kathleen Sedgley were attended the UKRI Technology Missions Fund (TMF) Engineering Biology Programme Convening Event in Cardiff on Thursday 3 October.

The two Mission Awards were both highlighted amongst the UKRI portfolio:

• Haemotoxic and cytotoxic snake venom metalloproteinases – production, enzymatic specificity, snakebite treatment, and biomedical use (PI: Christiane Berger-Schaffitzel)
  The team will establish robust production of snake venom metalloproteinase (SVMPs) toxins ready for use to develop next generation toxin-specific therapies for tackling snakebite envenoming.
• CYBER – Cyanobacteria Engineering for Restoring Environments (PI: Thomas Gorochowski)
  CYBER aims to develop the foundational multidisciplinary tools needed to de-risk environmentally focused engineering biology and ultimately support its future deployment into real-world ecosystems.

Anike Te (Chief Strategy Officer, Lucideon) joined a panel of experts discussing pathways to commercialisation.

During the meeting, UKRI announced the publication of the Synthetic Biology for Growth evaluation report, which features many of the impacts from BrisSynBio and the broader Bristol synthetic and engineering biology community and partnerships.

Dr Jess Cross, who works as an EPSRC Fellow across Biochemistry and Chemistry in collaboration with the Mark Dodding and Dek Woolfson labs, was awarded the best selected oral presentation at the 37th European Peptide Symposium in Florence last week. This is one of the major meetings on peptide science.

Jess presented work from the Woolfson and Dodding labs using de novo protein design to allosterically regulate kinesin-1 motors in cells. This work has recently been published in Nature Chemical Biology.

Congratulations, Jess!

The Dodding and Woolfson labs (Schools of Biochemistry and Chemistry, University of Bristol) have been awarded a grant by the BBSRC to understand how the kinesin-1 microtubule motor is activated, and to design new peptide-based-reagents to enable control of its activity.

Kinesin-1 motors play critical roles in intracellular transport of vesicles, organelles, protein complexes and mRNAs. They are particularly important for transport within the neuronal axons, and are dysregulated in many neurodegenerative diseases.

This four-year award, commencing in 2025, builds on their existing collaboration and will support two postdoctoral scientists working between the two labs.

For this project (Mechanism and design of allostery in the kinesin-1 complex), the team will aim to obtain a deep mechanistic understanding of the kinesin-1 autoinhibitory mechanism; insight into how cargo engagement induces conformational changes in the complex; and a clear understanding of the nature of active motor-cargo complexes. They will apply the latest protein/peptide design approaches to identify strategies and targets for manipulating kinesin activity, setting the stage for future work to apply these technologies to finely control kinesin-mediated transport in disease states.

Ross Anderson (Professor of Biochemistry, University of Bristol) travelled to Japan as part of a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology delegation that met with a range of Japanese Engineering Biology stakeholders (academics, startups/SMEs, industry, funders, policymakers) to promote closer cooperation between the two countries.

He participated in a RRI workshop, and a UTokyo-hosted panel discussions on EngBio capacity and training, visited the labs of Professor Akihiko Kondo, and Professor Kouhei Tsumoto, and had meetings with the Japan Bioindustry Association, and NEDO.