Enzyme Engineering
Open Access

Darren Nesbeth

Biography

Darren completed his PhD on intracellular trafficking in eukaryotes with Professor Mark Field at Imperial College. As a joint research fellow at Cambridge University and Kings College London, he used cell engineering to improve the bioprocessing of retroviral gene therapy vectors, working with Professor Nigel Slater and Professor Farzin Faraneh. He also worked at Imperial College Wright-Fleming Institute with Dr Keith Gould using heterotrimeric fusion proteins to help uncover immune mechanisms underlying spondyloarthritis. After joining UCL Biochemical Engineering Department Dr Nesbeth has applied cell engineering to process bottlenecks caused by high molecular weight genomic DNA leakage during disruptive harvest of biopharmaceuticals from E. coli, improving both clarification performance and cell productivity. Dr. Nesbeth is taking his research forward with an interdisciplinary team at UCL applying DOE techniques and ultra scale down (USD) probes to quantify process impacts of host cell engineering using a whole bioprocess analytics approach.

Research Interest

Darren Nesbeth’s research is focussed on applying engineering principles to the re-design of living cells for both improved functionality in biosynthesis of small molecules, and improved bioprocessing of biopharmaceuticals. He has extensive experience in harnessing molecular biology, intracellular trafficking and protein engineering to construct useful biological devices in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic systems.