Email: s.e.radford@leeds.ac.uk

Research profile and key clinical specialties

Sheena Radford, FMedSci, FRS, is Astbury Professor of Biophysics, and Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology. Her research focuses on protein folding, misfolding and assembly mechanisms.

Her research takes a multidisciplinary approach that crosses the boundaries between biochemistry, chemistry and medicine, and focusses on two major themes. First, we are investigating the role of protein misfolding in the onset of the amyloidogenic diseases, including dialysis-related amyloidosis, Alzheimer’s and type II diabetes.

In a second project, we are focussing on the folding of the outer membrane proteins (OMP) of Gram-negative organisms. These β-barrel proteins require chaperones and a β-barrel assembly machine (BAM complex) to successfully fold into the outer membrane.

Using folding and structural studies, Professor Radford’s aim is to elucidate the mechanism of OMP folding by BAM and to use the information to derive new and much-needed antibiotics.

Two key publications

• An in vivo platform for identifying inhibitors of protein aggregation. Saunders, J.C., Young, L.M., Mahood, R.A., Revill, C.H., Foster, R.J., Jackson, M.P., Smith. D.A.M., Ashcroft, A.E., Brockwell, D.J. & Radford, S.E. (2016) Nature Chem. Biol., 12, 94-101
• Screening and classifying small molecule inhibitors of amyloid formation using ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry. Young, L.M., Saunders, J.C., Mahood, R.A., Revill, C.H., Foster, R.J., Tu, L.-H., Raleigh, D.P.,Radford, S.E. & Ashcroft, A.E. (2015) Nature Chemistry, 1, 73- 81

Possible PhD projects

• From biophysics to cell biology: Developing new reagents and assays to understand and prevent amyloid formation and disease.

More information

Sheena has mentored 60 PhD students to completion of their PhD studies to date, of which 26 now have academic or research posts, and 10 work in industry.

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Keywords: Structural molecular biology, amyloidogenic, dialysis-related amyloidosis, membrane proteins, Gram-negative organisms, Sheena, Radford, Leeds

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