News

9 Oct 2025

Welcome to Noam Prywes

A very warm welcome to our new group leader Noam Prywes. Noam grew up in the US and received his PhD in Chemistry from Harvard studying the origin of life and the RNA world. There he became interested in molecular evolution and decided to study the biochemistry of carbon fixation as a postdoc, first at the Weizmann Institute and then at UC Berkeley…

9 Oct 2025

Chris Howe gives Tan Sri Leo Moggie Lecture in Malaysia

On the 18 September 2025, Chris Howe gave the 5th Tan Sri Leo Moggie Lecture at UNITEN, Malaysia's Premier Energy University, on algae and bioenergy. This prestigious Lecture is named in honour of Tan Sri Leo Moggie, a distinguished former politician and Chairman of TNB, the national energy company.Chris talked about the evolution and ecological im…

1 Oct 2025

Welcome to Professor James Thaventhiran

We are delighted to announce that James Thaventhiran has been appointed as Professor in the Department of Biochemistry.Over the past year, each of the six Research Themes within the School of Biological Sciences conducted an international search to identify outstanding individuals who would strengthen and enrich our research programmes. James was s…

23 Sep 2025

Claudia Bonfio awarded UKRI Future Leader Fellowship

Many congratulations to Claudia Bonfio, who is one of the 77 early-career researchers to be awarded a total of £120 million to lead vital research, collaborate with innovators and develop their careers as the research and innovation leaders of the future. The UKRI Future Leader Fellowship provides up to seven years of support to enable award holder…

23 Sep 2025

Biochemistry Postdocs Win Awards from the Postdoc Academy

In this Postdoc Appreciation Week we want to say a big thank you to all our postdocs for the brilliant contributions they make to the Department!We are very pleased that three of our postdocs have been recognised by the Cambridge Postdoc Academy. David Russell (Bonfio Group, pictured left) and Lisa Breckels (Lilley Group) are winners of the Level-U…

3 Sep 2025

Pankti Vaishnav wins MBoC Early Career Paper Award

Congratulations to Pankti Vaishnav on the selection of her research by the Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC) Editorial Board as the winner of the 2025 MBoC Early Career Paper Award. MBoC is the journal of the American Society for Cell Biology.The paper ‘Membrane composition and curvature in SNX9-mediated actin polymerization’ was the culmination…

2 Sep 2025

Exeter Professorship for Brian Hendrich

Congratulations to our associate Brian Hendrich on his appointment as Professor at the Living Systems Institute, University of Exeter. Brian moved to the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute from Edinburgh in 2008, and was recently Principal Research Associate and Director of the PhD Programme in Stem Cell Biology and Medicine. His group researches transc…

20 Aug 2025

'Makis' Ampartzidis is the Pete Coffey Award Winner

Congratulations to Ioakeim 'Makis' Ampartzidis, who has been awarded the Pete Coffey Prize for the best submitted abstract to the 2025 UK Stem Cell Network Inaugural Meeting. He is a postdoc in the Hollfelder lab, studying planar cell polarity signalling during early embryotic development. Makis carried out the work for the submitted paper during h…

21 Jul 2025

A novel method for investigating complex bioelectrical pathways

In a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Joshua Lawrence and colleagues from the research groups of Chris Howe (Biochemistry) and Jenny Zhang (Chemistry) present a novel method for investigating complex bioelectrical pathways using electrodes.Electron transfer reactions are fundamental to life, powering essential pr…

18 Jul 2025

Mike Deery secures BBSRC grant for state-of-the-art equipment

Mike Deery, who is the facility manager at the Cambridge Centre for Proteomics (CCP), has been awarded a grant from the BBSRC ALERT 24 mid-range equipment for biosciences research. The grant application was titled ‘Increasing mass spectrometry functionality and capacity for the Cambridge biological sciences community’.  The award will be supplement…

18 Jul 2025

Jessica Corry wins entrepreneur award

Congratulations to Jessica Corry, who has won the Cancer Research Horizons Early Career Entrepreneur Award! Jessica was a PhD student with Darerca Owen, graduating in 2022. She co-founded xterna, a company using enhanced nucleic acids to revolutionise targeted drug delivery.The award recognises ‘a PhD or Postdoctoral early-career cancer researcher …

14 Jul 2025

First pilot therapeutic trial in Dent disease caused by OCRL1 gene mutations

The Lowe Syndrome Trust UK, Dent Disease Foundation USA and The Lowe Syndrome Association USA have each awarded grants of €20,000 towards a pilot clinical study led Professor Francesco Emma, Head of the Nephrology unit at the Bambino Gesù Children’s hospital in Rome, Italy. The first patients were enrolled into this Phase 2 clinical trial of alpeli…

13 Jul 2025

Patil Group discovers how gut microbes could protect us from toxic 'forever chemicals'

Our Professor of Molecular Systems Biology, Kiran Patil, and his colleagues in the MRC Toxicology unit and at EMBL, Imperial College, King's College, London and Tübingen, have published an article in Nature Microbiology. The paper examines how certain species of microbe found in the human gut can absorb PFAS - the toxic and long-lasting ‘forever ch…

4 Jul 2025

Two new publications by the Salje Group

Jeanne Salje and her group based at CIMR have published two papers on Orientia tsutsugamushi, the bacterium that causes the vector-bourne human disease, scrub typhus. The first paper appears in PLOS Pathogens andis a collaboration with colleagues in Bangkok, Irvine and Oxford. It is an analysis of seven diverse strains of Orientia tsutsugamushi tha…

3 Jul 2025

Women's health feature includes the Twigger Group's work

A University feature article to highlight a new research network in the School of Biological Sciences focused on Women’s Health includes the Twigger Group's work on breastfeeding through the Cambridge Lactation Lab and CAMB MOM study. Read the ‘Putting women’s health in the spotlight’ feature.