Brendan Farrell

brendan farrell

Brendan joined us at the start of 2020 as a postdoctoral research associate and will be investigating the structure of poorly-characterised surface proteins of Plasmodium-infected erythrocytes and their interactions with host receptors. His first published study from the lab was his determination of the structure of the PfRCR complex, essential for erythrocyte invasion in malaria and he has been using structural methods to understand how monoclonal antibodies bind to the vaccine immunogen PfRH5.

Before joining the lab, Brendan completed his PhD at the University of Leeds under the co-supervision of Prof Alex Breeze, Prof Adrian Goldman and Dr Stephen Muench, funded by the Wellcome Trust. While there, he explored the structural characterisation of the full-length receptor tyrosine kinase, fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3), and of the chaperoning of kinases by the molecular chaperone Hsp90.

Publications:

Harrison, T.E.*, Alam, N.*, Farrell, B.*, Quinkert, D., Lias, A.M., King, L.D., Draper, S.J., Campeotto, I. and Higgins, M.K. (2024) Rational structure-guided design of a blood stage malaria vaccine immunogen presenting a single epitope from PfRH5. EMBO Molecular Medicine 16 2539-59 (* contributed equally)

Wang, L.T.*, Cooper, A.*, Farrell, B.*, Miura, K., Diouf, A., Muller-Sienerth, N., Crosnier, C., Purser, L., Maciuszek, M., Barret, J.R., McHugh, K., Tucker, C., Li, S., Doumbo, S., Doumtabe, D., Pyo, C.-P., Nielsen, C.M., Silk, S.E., Kayentao, K., Ongoiba, A., Nguyen, D.C., Lee, F.E., Minassian, A.M., Geraghty, D.E., Traore, B., Seder, R.A., Crompton, P.D., Wright, G., Draper, S.J., Long, C., Higgins, M.K. and Tan, J. (2023) Natural malaria infection elicits rare but potent neutralizing antibodies to the blood-stage antigen RH5. Cell 187 4981-95 (* contributed equally)

Farrell, B., Alam, N., Hart, M.N., Jamwal, A., Ragotte, R.J., Walters-Morgan, H., Draper, S.J., Knuepfer, E. and Higgins, M.K.* (2023) The PfRCR complex bridges malaria parasite and erythrocyte during invasion. Nature 625 578-584

Farrell B, Breeze AL. (2018) Structure, activation and dysregulation of fibroblast growth factor receptors: perspectives for clinical targeting. Biochem Soc Trans, 46: 1753-1770. DOI: 10.1042/BST20180004

Sanfelice D, Koss H, Bunney TD, Thompson GS, Farrell B, Katan M, Breeze AL. (2018) NMR backbone assignments of the tyrosine kinase domain of human fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 in apo state and in complex with inhibitor PD173074. Biomol NMR Assign, 12: 231-235. DOI: 10.1007/s12104-018-9814-7

Bunney TD, Inglis AJ, Sanfelice D*, Farrell B*, Kerr CJ, Thompson GS, Masson GR, Thiyagarajan N, Svergun DI, Williams RL, Breeze AL, Katan M. (2018) Disease variants of FGFR3 reveal molecular basis for the recognition and additional roles for Cdc37 in Hsp90 chaperone system. Structure, 26: 446-458. DOI: 10.1016/j.str.2018.01.016

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9919-9141