News

Welcome to our new first year PhDs, Matěj, Lauren and Snehith! Rebecca starts her three months as a Visiting Graduate Researcher in the Conway group at UCLA! She was previously awarded a Researcher Collaborations Grant by the Royal Society of Chemistry and a MacRobertson Travel Scholarship by University of Glasgow for this placement. Emma has successfully passes her PhD viva, congratulations to Dr. Emma Alexander!

This month Admir attended the Charles River PhD Poster Competition and was awarded the Participant's Prize. Congratulations Admir! Glenn, Otto and Andrea attended XXV International Round Table on Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids in Tokyo where Glenn and Andrea presented posters and Otto delivered a talk. Otto has been awarded with travel grants from IS3NA Society and the Chemical Biology #RSCChemBio to attend this conference. Glenn and Fergus have received a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) BBSRC Follow On Fund Award! This award, valued at £800k, will support the advancement of the TargoPep Ltd project, which focuses on creating a cell-selective therapeutic oligonucleotide delivery platform. Congratulations!

The Burley team is off to Craggan for the yearly team building highland trip! For more details about this, check our activity section. Harry has been awarded a prestigious Industrial Fellowship with the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to support the next three years of his PhD studies. Congratulations Harry!

The nucleic acid teams is once again away to London to present some exciting work at the 20th Nucleic Acid Forum. Otto gave a talk on his work on difluorinated nucleosides and our senior postdocs Andrea, Fred and Fergus participated in the poster session with their works. Admir is off to New Hampshire (USA) for Biocatalysis Gordon Research Seminar and Conference. He gave a talk about his work on chemoenzymatic synthesis of nucleoside analogues at GRS and gave a poster presentation during GRC. We also welcome Matej for a summer placement warm-up before he joins us as a PhD student in October!

We had a pleasure to attend University of Glasgow – University of Strathclyde Postgraduate Symposium on Synthetic Chemistry and Chemical Biology where Admir gave a talk on his work, Establishing a Chemoenzymatic Platform for the Synthesis of Nucleoside Analogues, and Eilidh participated in the poster session with her work, Homogenous Antibody-Drug Conjugates via Fab-Selective Reduction The Burley group is now a part of the initiative LEAF, launched by UCL, to improve sustainability and efficiency of laboratories.

Eilidh travels up from GSK (Stevenage) for a 3-month academic placement in the Burley group! Elliot has successfully graduated from the University of Strathclyde/GSK Industrial PhD Programme, congratulations to Dr. Elliot Fellows!

As part of our BBSRC Prosperity Partnership with GSK, we are pleased to have available a 4-year Research Associate position, starting from October 2024. The role will involve the preparation and analysis of next-generation antibody-drug-conjugates (ADCs). We are looking for candidates with a synthetic organic or chemical biology background, with desirable expertise in bioconjugation. This position will work closely with two other Research Associates in our network to evaluate their biophysical and biological properties, as well as building up a data analytics platform to eventually use this information for AI/ML applications. The Research Associate will collaborate with a great bunch of PIs in Chemistry (Nick Tomkinson, Craig Jamieson, Alison Nordon) and in the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy & Biomedical Sciences (Zahra Rattray). Deadline: 19th July. Application link: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DHU546/research-associate-620400

We have two PhD positions available. The first is a 3.5 year chemical biology studentship available either for an October 2024 or up to a mid-2025 start. This is a collaborative project with Zahra Rattray and GSK developing antibody-drug-conjugates (ADCs) to target difficult to treat cancers. We are looking for candidates with a synthetic organic or medicinal chemistry background who would like to apply their skills on the chemistry-biology interface (https://lnkd.in/e5xiK42y). The second is alongside the group of Nicholas J. W. Rattray in the develop the next generation of microfluidic platforms to detect molecular changes in cell models (https://lnkd.in/eQvt4agT) Check out the links for more information.

This month we have a new review from Rebecca which can be viewed on our featured and publication pages! We have also said goodbye and wish all the best to two of our members Chris and Eva who have moved within the university to the MacKay group.

Three papers out this month! Congratulations to Fred, Karina and Rebecca for this!!! Check out our publication section for details on our latest published articles. Another massive congrats to Dr Immacolata Abate who passed her viva brilliantly! Sadly it always means Imma leaves the Burley group - we will miss you Imma!

New starts! Jack, Monica and Birsen are joining the Burley group for their PhD. One for each subgroup: Jack will be working as part of the Ynamine team, Monica within the transcriptional regulation team and Birsen will join the splicing team! Samantha joins the group for her final year project. Welcome all! Admir presented a poster on his enzymatic work at the BioProNET2 2023 meeting hosted at GSK (Stevenage, UK).

Glenn, Andrea and Chris are off to the DBS (Dynamic Biosensor) User meeting in Munich! A chance for networking and to participate in some useful workshops.

Andrea's collaborative effort with Dr John Parkinson was rewarded with a £1.1 M BBSRC grant received by the University to establish a state-of-the-art UK national facility for studying biomedicines and biomaterials aimed at aiding the invention of new medicines. The NMR-BASE (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for Biomolecule Analysis in Supported Environments) project is led by Strathclyde’s Dr John Parkinson and Dr Andrea Taladriz-Sender. Massive congratulations to Andrea on this who is Co-Investigator on the grant proposal. The whole Burley group (minus me - gutted) heads to Craggan for the yearly team building highland trip! For more detail about this, check our activity section.

The nucleic acid team is away to London to present some exciting work at the 19th Nucleic Acid Forum. Alex gave a talk on his work on abasic sites, a fantastic ending to his postdoc in the group! We say goodbye to Alex, who is now off to Switzerland to start a senior scientist position at Bachem. Happy for you Alex, but the team will miss you!

Rebecca and Elliot travel up from GSK (Stevenage) for a 3-month academic placement in the Burley group!

We welcome Monica and Jack for a summer placement warm-up before they join us as PhD students in October! Congratulations to Rebecca for winning the runner up prize for her talk and Admir runner up prize for his poster presentation at the Glasgow Organic and Chemical Biology Meeting! Andrea and Otto are off to Newport (USA) for the Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Oligonucleotides Gordon Research Seminar! They both returned to Glasgow with poster prizes in hand! Karina passed her viva brilliantly, congrats Dr Chan! What a great month for the Burley team!