ABOUT US

The team in the Department of Biochemical Engineering at UCL carries out world-leading UKRI and company sponsored research on biopharmaceutical formulation. Many antibody-based therapies have been developed and marketed to treat or prevent a range of diseases. Novel antibodies have to meet a wide range of criteria including stability and physical properties in solution that are necessary for them to be safely stored and administered to patients. While many of these properties can be controlled by carefully designed formulations, some have the potential to be mitigated through protein engineering. Such changes can often be informed through mechanistic understanding of the destabilising processes.

This industry-sponsored project will explore molecular dynamics simulations of an antibody in specific formulations and storage conditions to gain a deeper mechanistic understanding of the experimentally observed routes of destabilisation. The PDRA in molecular dynamics simulation of biologics, at UCL, will investigate the stability of antibodies in storage and product formulations. They will also analyse the simulation data to characterise and understand the impacts of formulations upon stability and aggregation behaviours. The PDRA position will be offered for 6 months, and the post is available from 1 Oct 2025.