NIBRT celebrates ERC Starting Grant Awardee Dr Alan Costello

NIBRT celebrates ERC Starting Grant Awardee Dr Alan Costello

Dr Alan Costello, Principal Investigator at the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT), has been awarded a prestigious €1.86 million European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for research that aims to fundamentally expand what living cells can be engineered to produce. The award is NIBRT’s first ERC grant and represents an important milestone in the Institute’s growing international research profile. ERC grants are among Europe’s most competitive and highly regarded research awards, supporting researchers to pursue ambitious, frontier research with the potential to open entirely new areas of scientific discovery.

The five-year project, TO-CODES: Creating a bilingual cell with two mutually orthogonal genetic codes, will add three new PhD students and a postdoctoral researcher to Dr Costello’s team here in NIBRT.

Every living cell relies on molecular machines called ribosomes to read genetic instructions and assemble proteins from a defined set of natural building blocks (amino acids). Yet ribosomes are potentially capable of doing much more than nature requires of them. In principle, they could be used to incorporate entirely new building blocks and create molecules that do not exist in the natural world. The challenge is that a cell’s ribosomes already perform an essential role in keeping it alive. TO-CODES will seek to overcome this fundamental constraint by creating a new cell with two independent protein-production systems. If successful, the research could provide scientists with a powerful new platform build novel biopolymers with customised chemistries. The potential applications extend from the discovery of new medicines and new approaches to sustainable biomanufacturing to the development of safer engineered biological systems.

“Engineering the essential functions of a living cell has always been a challenge in biology,” said Dr Costello. “With this project, TO-CODES, we hope to change that, expanding what a living cell is capable of. I am enormously grateful to the ERC for the opportunity to pursue an idea of this ambition and to build the team that will make it possible.”

Dr Costello joined NIBRT in 2024 and established its Biological Engineering Group with support from a Research Ireland Pathway Award. His research focuses on engineering RNA and the cellular machinery involved in protein synthesis, combining fundamental biological discovery with the potential for future therapeutic applications.

Following his PhD at DCU with Prof Martin Clynes and Prof Niall Barron, Dr Costello continued his research career in the United States. He undertook postdoctoral training with Prof Ahmed Badran, including appointments at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Scripps Research Institute, California, before returning to Ireland to establish his independent research programme at NIBRT.

Dr Fiona Killard-Lynch, Chief Scientific Officer and Director of Research and Innovation at NIBRT, said:

“Alan is an exceptional scientist with the ambition to ask genuinely difficult questions, and this award is first and foremost recognition of the originality and quality of his research. The ERC backs researchers with the potential to push the boundaries of what is scientifically possible, and TO-CODES is an excellent example of that ambition.

“For NIBRT, our first ERC award is also an important milestone. We have been deliberately building a research environment in which outstanding scientists can pursue ambitious fundamental research alongside our established strengths in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and translation. To see Alan succeed at this level is a powerful validation of that direction.

“NIBRT has an increasingly important role in bringing together Ireland’s biopharmaceutical research capability, connecting excellent science across institutions with the infrastructure, industry relationships and translational expertise needed to create impact. This award adds further momentum to that ambition. Ireland has the scientific talent to compete at the very highest international level, and we want NIBRT to be one of the places where that talent can thrive, connect and achieve.”

ERC Starting Grants support outstanding early-career researchers to pursue ambitious ideas, establish independent research programmes and build their own teams at a pivotal stage in their careers. In its 2026 Starting Grant competition, the ERC awarded €705 million to 421 researchers across Europe.

President of the European Research Council, Prof Maria Leptin, said: “The creativity and ambition of this new generation of grantees are inspiring. Over 50 nationalities are represented amongst these researchers who will carry out their work across Europe. ERC Starting Grants will give them independence and support early on in their careers, needed for them to push scientific boundaries. This is the best investment we can make to further strengthen our research base and Europe’s future.”