Frederick Sanger was an English biochemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice.
Michael Smith was a British-born Canadian biochemist and businessman. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kary Mullis for his work in developing site-directed mutagenesis. Following a PhD in 1956 from the University of Manchester,he undertook postdoctoral research with Har Gobind Khorana at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver,British Columbia,Canada. Subsequently,Smith worked at the Fisheries Research Board of Canada Laboratory in Vancouver before being appointed a professor of biochemistry in the UBC Faculty of Medicine in 1966. Smith's career included roles as the founding director of the UBC Biotechnology Laboratory and the founding scientific leader of the Protein Engineering Network of Centres of Excellence (PENCE). In 1996 he was named Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology. Subsequently,he became the founding director of the Genome Sequencing Centre at the BC Cancer Research Centre.
A monoclonal antibody is an antibody produced from a cell lineage made by cloning a unique white blood cell. All subsequent antibodies derived this way trace back to a unique parent cell.
Sydney Brenner was a South African biologist. In 2002,he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code,and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge,England. He established the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology,and founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley,California,United States.
Sir John Cowdery Kendrew,was an English biochemist,crystallographer,and science administrator. Kendrew shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Max Perutz,for their work at the Cavendish Laboratory to investigate the structure of haem-containing proteins.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is responsible for co-coordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is part of United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI),which came into operation 1 April 2018,and brings together the UK's seven research councils,Innovate UK and Research England. UK Research and Innovation is answerable to,although politically independent from,the Department for Business,Energy and Industrial Strategy.
César Milstein,CH,FRS was an Argentinian-born British biochemist in the field of antibody research. Milstein shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 with Niels Kaj Jerne and Georges J. F. Köhler for developing the hybridoma technique for the production of monoclonal antibodies.
Phage display is a laboratory technique for the study of protein–protein,protein–peptide,and protein–DNA interactions that uses bacteriophages to connect proteins with the genetic information that encodes them. In this technique,a gene encoding a protein of interest is inserted into a phage coat protein gene,causing the phage to "display" the protein on its outside while containing the gene for the protein on its inside,resulting in a connection between genotype and phenotype. These displaying phages can then be screened against other proteins,peptides or DNA sequences,in order to detect interaction between the displayed protein and those other molecules. In this way,large libraries of proteins can be screened and amplified in a process called in vitro selection,which is analogous to natural selection.
Georges Jean Franz Köhler was a German biologist.
Sir John Ernest Walker is a British chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997. As of 2015 Walker is Emeritus Director and Professor at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit in Cambridge,and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College,Cambridge.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge,England,involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical research laboratory at the forefront of scientific discovery,dedicated to improving the understanding of key biological processes at atomic,molecular and cellular levels using multidisciplinary methods,with a focus on using this knowledge to address key issues in human health.
Richard Henderson is a British molecular biologist and biophysicist and pioneer in the field of electron microscopy of biological molecules. Henderson shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank.„Thanks to his work,we can look at individual atoms of living nature,thanks to cryo-electron microscopes we can see details without destroying samples,and for this he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry."
Morten Peter Meldal is a Danish chemist and Nobel laureate. He is a professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen,Denmark. He is best known for developing the CuAAC-click reaction,concurrently with but independent of Valery V. Fokin and K. Barry Sharpless.
Cambridge Antibody Technology was a biotechnology company headquartered in Cambridge,England,United Kingdom. Its core focus was on antibody therapeutics,primarily using Phage Display and Ribosome Display technology.
John McCafferty is a British scientist,one of the founders of Cambridge Antibody Technology alongside Sir Gregory Winter and David Chiswell. He is well known as one of the inventors of scFv antibody fragment phage display,a technology that revolutionised the monoclonal antibody drug discovery. McCafferty and his team developed this process following failures previously generating antibodies by immunizing mice. Later improvements of antibody phage display technology enables the display of millions of different antibody fragments on the surface of filamentous phage and subsequent selection of highly specific recombinant antibodies to any given target. This technology is widely exploited in pharmaceutical industry for the discovery and development of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies to treat mainly cancer,inflammatory and infectious diseases. One of the most successful was HUMIRA (adalimumab),discovered by Cambridge Antibody Technology as D2E7 and developed and marketed by Abbott Laboratories. HUMIRA,an antibody to TNF alpha,was the world's first phage display derived fully human antibody,which achieved annual sales exceeding $1bn therefore achieving blockbuster status. Humira went on to dominate the best-selling drugs lists - in 2016:The best selling drugs list researched by Genetic Engineering &Biotechnology News,published in March 2017,details that Humira occupied the number 1 position for 2015 and 2016. Whilst for 2017,Abbvie reports that Humira achieved $18.427billion of sales in 2017
Ff phages is a group of almost identical filamentous phage including phages f1,fd,M13 and ZJ/2,which infect bacteria bearing the F fertility factor. The virion is a flexible filament measuring about 6 by 900 nm,comprising a cylindrical protein tube protecting a single-stranded circular DNA molecule at its core. The phage codes for only 11 gene products,and is one of the simplest viruses known. It has been widely used to study fundamental aspects of molecular biology. George Smith and Greg Winter used f1 and fd for their work on phage display for which they were awarded a share of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Early experiments on Ff phages used M13 to identify gene functions,and M13 was also developed as a cloning vehicle,so the name M13 is sometimes used as an informal synonym for the whole group of Ff phages.
John David Sutherland FRS is a British chemist at Medical Research Council (MRC),Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB),Protein &Nucleic Acid Chemistry Division. His work on the possible chemistry of early life has been widely recognised.
Terence Howard Rabbitts FRS FMedSci is currently Professor of Molecular Immunology at the Institute of Cancer Research,London.
Jane Osbourn,OBE,is a scientist and former chair of the UK BioIndustry Association.
Philipp Holliger is a Swiss molecular biologist best known for his work on xeno nucleic acids (XNAs) and RNA engineering. Holliger is a program leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
