Jody Mason
Chief Scientific Officer, Revolver Therapeutics & Professor of Biochemistry University of Bath
Professor Jody Mason received his B.Sc. (Hons.) in Biochemistry and Ph.D. from the University of Bristol, UK, where he studied the folding and stability of disulfide-bridged proteins. Following postdoctoral research in protein misfolding at the University of Manchester and peptide-DNA interactions in Freiburg, Germany, he established his independent research group at the University of Essex in 2007 before moving to the University of Bath in 2015, where he is Professor of Biochemistry.
His research focuses on developing peptide-based approaches to challenging protein-protein interactions, particularly intracellular targets that have proven difficult to address using conventional therapeutic modalities. His laboratory has modified and developed two key intracellular peptide discovery platforms – Protein Fragment Complementation Assay (PCA) and Transcription Block Survival (TBS) – which enable functional selection of potent and selective peptide modulators within living cells.
A major focus of the group is the development of constrained peptide libraries and intracellular cyclisation strategies, using diverse chemical cross-linking approaches to improve peptide stability and explore new conformational space. These technologies are being applied to oncogenic transcription factors and related other intracellular protein-protein interactions, as well as protein aggregation associated with neurodegenerative disease.
Recent work from the group has demonstrated intracellular cyclisation-coupled peptide library screening, the functional selection of constrained peptides that disrupt transcription factor-DNA interactions, and chemical approaches for generating stable cyclic peptide and miniprotein architectures inside cells.
Professor Mason is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and Chemistry and has served on the Alzheimer’s Research UK Grant Review Board and BBSRC funding panels. Alongside his academic role, he is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Revolver Therapeutics, a University of Bath spinout developing intracellular peptide therapeutics against transcription factors and other challenging disease targets, and is a scientific advisor to US biotechnology company Sapience Therapeutics.
Seminars
- Explore how intracellular constrained peptide libraries and diverse cross-linking modalities can expand access to challenging intracellular targets beyond the reach of conventional therapeutic approaches.
- Compare different peptide screening strategies and the trade-offs involved in selecting for affinity, stability, cellular permeability and functional biological activity.
- Discover how functional peptide selection in living cells can identify modulators of transcription factors and other complex intracellular protein-protein interactions, creating new opportunities for therapeutic development.
