Accelerating evolution to create new medicines with Christian Diercks, PhD
Biologic drugs account for about a quarter of recent drug approvals, and most are antibodies. Although antibodies have transformed treatment for many conditions, they mainly work by binding to their targets. But some diseases may benefit more from therapeutics that can selectively alter those targets instead. In this free Front Row lecture, Assistant Professor Christian Diercks will discuss how he harnesses accelerated evolution—a laboratory process that speeds up cycles of genetic change and selection—to engineer therapeutic enzymes that actively break down or modify disease-related molecules. At the center of this work is T7-ORACLE, a synthetic biology platform developed by Diercks' lab. It continuously introduces mutations into selected genes in bacteria to rapidly evolve proteins, including enzymes, at large scale with minimal researcher intervention. The Diercks lab is using T7-ORACLE to evolve enzymes for the selective degradation of the painful crystals behind gout flares, and to target voltage-gated ion channels involved in chronic pain, as a non-addictive alternative to opioid-based therapeutics.
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