Prof. Laura Itzhaki
- Professor of Structural Pharmacology
Contact
About
Laura did her PhD with Dr Phil Evans, Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge, and then moved to a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry with Prof. Sir Alan Fersht. She subsequently held a Beit Memorial Fellowship in Medical Research and then an MRC Career Development Award, with which she started her own group.
In 2003 she moved to the MRC Cancer Cell Unit in Cambridge and briefly returned to the the Department of Chemistry, before taking up a Lectureship in the Department of Pharmacology in 2013. Laura is co-Director of Cambridge Academy of Therapeutics Sciences. In October 2020 she became Head of Department of Pharmacology.
Research
Our research focuses on a class of proteins with very distinctive architectures, known as tandem-repeat proteins. Our group and others have shown that the simple modular, one-dimensional architecture of tandem-repeat proteins gives them distinctive properties that make it uniquely straightforward to map the energetics of their structures and to rationally redesign their stability, folding and binding function.
This class of proteins is thus an exceptionally sensitive and versatile tool that we are now exploiting to dissect otherwise intractable cellular mechanisms. We are also exploring how to exploit the extraordinary design-ability of these proteins for biomedical and biotechnology applications.