Nicola Burgess-Brown was born in Northern Ireland. After graduating with a degree in biochemistry from the University of Ulster, she moved to SmithKline Beecham where she worked for 1 year before pursuing a PhD in Molecular Microbiology at Nottingham, also sponsored by SB. She then moved to Oxford GlycoSciences, in a team that aimed to identify and validate novel oncology targets for generating therapeutic antibodies. Nicola returned to academia to the University of Oxford to lead a team in Biotechnology within the Structural Genomics Consortium. Over the course of 17 years, working in a highly collaborative environment, her team developed cutting edge technologies and high-throughput (HTP) platforms to express a plethora of very challenging human proteins for structural and functional analyses. From September 2021, she led the Enzymology and Protein Engineering Team at Exact Sciences Innovation in Oxford, producing proteins for cancer diagnostic research. Since January 2024, she rejoined the SGC, working as a consultant (Chief Operating Officer, Protein Sciences) coordinating protein production across the 6 SGC sites and, from April 2025, became a Professorial Research Fellow in Protein Sciences at UCL.
Nicola's research interests include developing novel technologies to express and purify proteins for many applications including drug discovery, cancer diagnostics and vaccine development. She is interested in finding new methods for tackling highly challenging proteins, and at Oxford, developed methodologies for expressing and purifying human integral membrane proteins. She is also keen to work on targets involved in antimicrobial resistance, having studied quorum sensing during her PhD. Throughout her career, she has enjoyed collaborative research which has enabled productive interactions with colleagues in academia and industry partners.
Burgess-Brown NA, Sharma S, Sobott F, Loenarz C, Oppermann U, Gileadi O
Protein Expr. Purif.. 2008-1-26 . 59(1):94-102 .doi: 10.1016/j.pep.2008.01.008
PMID: 18289875