Professor Darren Tomlinson - University of Leeds

Professor Daren Tomlinson

Revealing hidden biology: dissecting protein function with Adhirons

Understanding how proteins function, and how to control that function, remains one of the biggest challenges in biology and drug discovery. Traditional approaches, from small molecules to antibodies, often fail to access the conformationally dynamic or “undruggable” regions that govern protein activity. In this talk, I will introduce Adhirons (also known as Affimers): small, stable engineered protein scaffolds that can be isolated to bind target proteins with high specificity and affinity.

I will discuss how we use Adhirons to probe and inhibit protein function, revealing previously hidden allosteric and conformational features in key signalling proteins such as Ras and Aurora A. By combining structural and biochemical analysis with cell-based assays, we show how these reagents can modulate protein activity and act as templates for new therapeutic strategies. This highlights how Adhiron-based platforms are accelerating the discovery of functional hotspots, guiding small-molecule design, and helping to unlock the vast, unexplored space of the undruggable proteome.