Sustaining Innovation Alumni

Dr David Wright

Molecular Sciences, Astex Pharmaceuticals

This project targeted the structure determination of a membrane protein involved in drug resistance in disease. Although membrane proteins make up over a third of drug targets, they are not routinely targeted by structure based drug design. It was therefore necessary to evaluate new methods and technologies to work towards my goal of solving a novel membrane protein structure.

Through this project I have gained considerable experience in construct design, mutagenesis, eukaryotic expression, membrane protein purification, characterisation and crystallisation.

David Wright is currently a Senior Scientist (Study Director) at Concept Life Sciences, UK.

Recent publications:

Wright, D., O’Reilly, M. and Tisi, D. Engineering and purification of a thermostable, high-yield, variant of PfCRT, the Plasmodium falciparum chloroquine resistance transporter. Protein Expression and Purification, 2018; DOI 10.1016/j.pep.2017.08.005.