Alan Costello

Dr Costello’s project will explore RNA delivery vectors for transfer RNA therapeutics, aiming to develop new biomolecules to treat human genetic diseases that currently have no therapeutic options. Dr. Costello completed his PhD training under Prof. Martin Clynes and Niall Barron in 2019 and has since spent five years in the United States working with Prof. Ahmed H. Badran. His postdoctoral research, conducted at both The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and The Scripps Research Institute in California, focused on advancing Genetic Code Expansion technologies. His work specifically addressed the impact of mRNA codon usage and tRNA evolution on the programmed synthesis of peptides with unnatural amino acids (doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.15.594368). Now, Dr. Costello will leverage principles of directed evolution and synthetic biology to address the challenges associated with the function and delivery of transfer RNA therapeutics.