Dr. Mark Isalan

Biography

Mark Isalan earned his Ph.D. in engineering zinc fingers to bind new DNA sequences at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge, from 1996 to 2000. His work was supervised by Prof. Sir Aaron Klug and continued with postdoctoral research from 2000 to 2002 at Gendaq Ltd in the UK, which is now owned by Sangamo Biosciences, Richmond, CA. His contributions were pivotal in the development of CompoZr zinc finger nucleases, which are commercially available from Sigma Aldrich and are considered forerunners to CRISPR technology. From 2002 to 2006, Dr. Isalan was awarded a Wellcome Trust International Research Fellowship to conduct research on engineering artificial gene networks in the group of Prof. Luis Serrano at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. He served as group leader at the EMBL-CRG Systems Biology Unit in Barcelona from 2006 to 2013, where he specialized in synthetic gene network engineering. Since moving to Imperial College London in 2013, he has continued his work in protein gene network engineering, aiming to design biological systems that behave predictably and robustly, ultimately contributing to the development of new forms of gene therapy.

Research Interests

Experience