RESEARCH

Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Keunwan Park, in collaboration with IPD scientists and research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Resesarch Center, published a paper in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology entitled “Control of repeat-protein curvature by computational protein design“. Dr. Park describes a general computational approach to control the shape of binding surfaces on repeat-protein scaffolds and applies it to leucine-rich repeat proteins. This results in  beautiful modular assemblies with unique surfaces and constant curvature for a wide variety of applications.

INSTITUTE

The IPD proudly announced its Advisory Board this month, welcoming board chair Tachi Yamada, George Church, Peter Goodfellow, and Bryan White. These four distinguished professionals will provide oversight and guidance to the IPD’s mission to establish protein design as a powerfulforce in basic research, biotechnology and entrepreneurial innovation. Follow the links to our official announcement or to read the bios of our board members.

We hosted our second Mini Symposium entitled “New Approaches to Protein Design“. The symposium began with Bill DeGrado, Professor at UCSF speaking on the analysis and design of membrane proteins. Following this was an exploration by Gevorg Grigoryan, Assistant Professor at Dartmouth, of computational approaches to designing and modeling proteins. The event was very well attended and generated many interesting discussions at the IPD afterwards! Click the photos below to view them in full size.

Congratulations to the University of Washington’s CoMotion on the successful launch of their new name and mission! Previously the UW Center for Commercialization, CoMotion “will collaboratively move innovations to impact by helping to create and promote entrepreneurial thinking, innovation mindsets, creative problem-solving, and experiential and team-based project learning throughout UW”. Click here to read more about this launch and watch the video below (the IPD’s Ingrid Swanson Pultz and KumaMax are featured!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3ceZYfqNkY

Many of our researchers are also featured in ‘Innovation Across Campus’. Watch those videos here: http://comotion.uw.edu/researchers/innovation-across-campus

OPPORTUNITIES

The IPD is offering an opportunity for a Practicum Independent Study for a Foster MBA student. An MBA Student is needed to work with IPD leadership to collect market data on  “Small Molecule Binder” applications. The data will be used to build valuation models that will help us to better understand the commercial opportunities for these applications (or others).

Detailed info about this study opportunity can be found on our Employment page.