Prof. Zoë Waller
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drzoewaller.bsky.social
Prof. Zoë Waller
@drzoewaller.bsky.social
Professor in Drug Discovery at UCL School of Pharmacy. Mum of 3. Researching. Lecturing. Chemistry. Pharmacy. DNA. RNA. i-Motif. G-Quadruplex. Cycling. Commuting. Legs. Shoes.
November 7, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Explainer on YouTube is also here: youtu.be/p1EHjqWRgfU
UCL School of Pharmacy Research: Peptides that bind i-motif DNA and change c-Myc gene expression
YouTube video by DrZoeWaller
youtu.be
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Thank you to the BBSRC for funding this work through the Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership (BB/M011216/1) and a research grant (BB/W001616/1).
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
The benefits of these peptides as ligands is that you can easily acquire these through custom-peptide synthesis. Peptides are also easily modifiable for other uses.
We look forward to developing these peptides further to make them better.
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
The c-Myc protein has been considered ‘undruggable’ for decades because of its flexible and multifaceted nature - by focusing on the DNA that controls its expression, rather than the protein itself, this is an alternative way to target this cancer gene.
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
We looked at two peptides in detail (PTN and VSE) and show that they are able to modulate cMYC transcription.
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
In this work we show a set of peptides which can bind the C-rich i-motif forming sequence of DNA in the promoter region of the oncogene cMYC.
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Dr Effrosyni Alexandrou, Shuang Chen and Prof Shozeb Haider for their work on the modelling and Dr Chris Waudby on the NMR studies. It was a pleasure to host Dr Jessica King at UCL on a visit, and thanks also to her contributions with supporting Dilek.
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Thank you to all the team for making this happen especially to Dr Summer Rosonovski, who worked through her PhD to develop the Phage Display methodology to find the peptides and Dr Dilek Guneri who characterised the peptides in detail using biological and biophysical methods.
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Cute! Also love the vest!
November 5, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Thank you Krystal. I have put a new image below and updated my settings ❤️
October 16, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Sounds like the best misunderstanding 😆
October 16, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Initially I went with choroplast, but realised the greeneess was a distraction.

Didn't even consider a kidney - seems obvious now! I don't often see them in my day to day I guess.
October 16, 2025 at 7:20 AM
That's a good one!

Also very true 🍅 🍅 🍅
October 16, 2025 at 7:16 AM
I see it now.
October 16, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Either way, adding some sauce 🍅 🍅 🍅
October 15, 2025 at 7:44 PM