Rodriques lab Applied Biotechnology Laboratory

Close-up of a microscope lens, imaging biological samples through a column of water.

We are entrepreneurial and impact-driven bioengineers. Our goal is to invent robust biotechnologies that solve major problems in science and medicine, and then to deploy those technologies into the hands of as many scientists, clinicians, or patients as we can.

New classes of treatments are changing the way we think about curing disease. Gene therapies promise to provide permanent cures for a range of genetic disorders; immune cells can now be reengineered and leveraged in the fight against cancer; and new RNA technologies have demonstrated the ability to fight global pandemics.

We believe that the era of new treatments is just beginning. By leveraging tools such as directed evolution, multiomics, and computational protein design, we can develop new technologies to treat or cure intractable diseases.

Most importantly, we believe that the technologies we invent should have a concrete impact outside of our lab. To realise that impact, we combine our core technical competency in bioengineering with an expertise in biotechnology entrepreneurship that is unique among academic labs, allowing us to identify more important unmet needs and deploy solutions more rapidly.

Our first projects address major unmet needs in drug delivery, diagnostics, and multiomics. We are developing a new generation of viral vectors to allow gene therapies to be delivered to specific cell types throughout the body, to enable more targeted interventions for diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis. One day, we even hope to be able to cure more common conditions like allergies.

We are developing a new platform technology for mapping the cell-type and circuit organisation of the brain at the single-cell level, so that we can identify and understand subtypes of schizophrenia and depression and develop more targeted therapies.

Finally, we are building new strategies for analysing biomolecules in blood and cerebrospinal fluid, with the goal of enabling everyone to get an annual, risk-free liquid biopsy for Alzheimer’s disease.