Webinars
Our webinars take place on the second Tuesday of each month at midday and usually last 20–30 minutes. We reserve additional time for announcements and wider discussion. Featuring speakers from a range of sectors, the series provides valuable updates on nucleic acid innovations taking place across the UK.
Upcoming
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13 October 2026 at 12:00 - 12:40
Dr Jill Makin |
Register here! |
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Cell-free DNA: Enabling the Next Generation of Advanced Therapies DNA is a critical component of advanced therapies, serving both as a starting material for products such as viral vectors and mRNA, and increasingly as a therapeutic modality in its own right. As advanced therapies continue to expand into clinical development, developers face growing demands for DNA that can be produced rapidly, reliably and at scale, while also supporting novel DNA architectures and sequences that cannot be readily manufactured using traditional cell-based approaches. Recent advances in enzymatic, cell-free DNA manufacturing are helping to address these challenges, offering an alternative to traditional production methods that rely on bacterial fermentation. These technologies are accelerating development timelines, supporting increasingly complex therapeutic approaches, and enabling new possibilities for DNA-based medicines. This presentation will explore the evolving role of cell-free DNA in advanced therapy development and discuss how innovations in DNA manufacturing are helping unlock the next generation of treatments for patients with serious and life-limiting diseases. Learn more about the presentation here. Help us spread the word! Know someone interested in cell-free DNA and advanced therapies? Share our LinkedIn post with your network and invite them to join the webinar. 👉 View and share our LinkedIn post |
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Dr Carolina Grandellis and Dr Rennos Fragkoudis will jointly introduce the Earlham Biofoundry and Edinburgh Genome Foundry. They will explain what biofoundries are, how these facilities operate and the capabilities they offer. The webinar will outline how researchers and organisations can access facilities and explore opportunities to work with them.
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08 December 2026 at 12:00 - 12:40
Rochelle Aw
Rochelle Aw
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Cell-Free Protein Synthesis Platforms for the Production of Diverse Therapeutics
Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) is an emerging biomanufacturing platform that enables rapid protein production without the need for living cells. By supporting accelerated design-build-test cycles, deployable formats and lyophilised, shelf-stable reagents, CFPS has attracted growing interest for decentralised biologics manufacturing. We investigate CFPS for the production of multiple biotherapeutic modalities across different expression systems. Using Escherichia coli-based cell-free extracts, vaccine and antibody candidates were rapidly expressed, demonstrating the versatility of bacterial CFPS for recombinant protein production. In parallel, a Pichia pastoris-derived cell-free platform was evaluated for virus-like particle (VLP) assembly, extending cell-free manufacturing capabilities to more structurally complex biologics. Together, these case studies highlight the flexibility of CFPS as a common manufacturing framework for diverse therapeutic products. By combining speed, modularity and reduced infrastructure requirements, CFPS offers a promising route towards distributed biologics production, with potential applications in routine healthcare delivery and emergency response. |
Past webinars
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08 September 2026 at 12:00 - 12:40
Professor Tom Brown |
A summary of the talk will be available here in the near future. |
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Recent developments in nucleic acid chemistry and applications.
Tom Brown is Professor of Nucleic Acid Chemistry in the Departments of Chemistry and Oncology at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on nucleic acid chemistry and its applications in biology and medicine. He is co-inventor of several genetic analysis technologies and co-founder of Oswel, Primer Design, and ATDBio. With over 450 publications and patents, he has received numerous prestigious awards, including several from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and was named Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year (2014) and BBSRC Innovator of the Year (2016). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has held senior leadership roles within the Royal Society of Chemistry, including serving as President of the Chemistry-Biology Interface Division. |
