Marko Juhana Hyvönen

Prof Hyvonen is a structural biologist with over 25 years of experience with protein expression, engineering and structural analysis. Having received MSc degree at the University of Helsinki in 1991 in biochemistry. In 1993 he moved to European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, for his PhD work in the group of Matti Saraste. It was at EMBL that he started working in X-ray crystallography while stydying newly identified pleckstrin homology (PH) domains and their interactions with phosphoinsotide lipids. He joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Tom Blundell, funded by EMBO and HFSPO postdoctoral fellowships. In this period he initiate the research programme on activins and their interacting proteins. He received an independent BBSRC David Phillips fellowshipp to start his own group in 2001 and was appointed as University Lecturer (equivalent of Assistant Professor) in Cambridge in 2007. He became a Professor of Protein Biochemistry in 2021. He has hosted over 10 postdoctoral fellows in his group, trained 11 PhDs and several MPhil students. Prof Hyvonen runs currently a research group of ca. 10 scientists. His group employs methods of biochemistry, protein engineering, biophysical measurements and protein crystallography to study their topics of interest. Prof Hyvonen's research interests are divided to several areas, with work on TGF-beta family growth factors being the longest running theme for the group. His group has studies the extracellular interactions of these growth factors, activin in particular, and their interacting proteins such as follistatin and gremlin. Lately his interest has been focused on the regulation of these growth factors by their pro-domains. The other main focus is in the development of small molecule inhibitors using fragment-based and structure-guided drug discovery methods. This work started in 2010 with large Wellcome Trust grants to Profs Blundell, Abell, Venkitaraman and Hyvonen to use fragment-based methods to inhibit protein-protein interaction. This work expanded from initial work on RAD51:BRCA2 interaction to several other cancer-related targets such as Aurora A, CK2alpha and PLK1. His group identified a cryptic pocket in protein kinase CK2alpha and used this as an anchor for new class of kinase inhibitors which were the most specific ever for this target. This work was taken forward with a biotech company for development of CK2apha inhibitor as a therapeutic agent. In 2016 Prof Hyvonen founded Qkine Ltd, a biotech company for the development of next generation growth factors for the stem cell and regenerative medicine applications. The company is operating in its own premises in the Cambridge Science Park and employs over 10 people. Prof Hyvonen is chief scientific officer of the company, leading the protein engineering and protein productions. One of the unique aspects of Qkine is, in addition to optimising growth factors for maximal activity and stability, production of all their products are free form animal-derived components, from bacterial host organisms. (Fonte: Currículo Lattes)