Dr James Hindley is a Lecturer in the Physical Sciences of Life in the Department of Chemistry, King’s College London. James leads a multidisciplinary research group that works at the chemical, biological and engineering interface to design and engineer bioinspired molecular assemblies known as synthetic cells.

James gained his MSci in Chemistry from University College London, before undertaking a PhD in Chemical and Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London under the supervision of Profs. Oscar Ces and Charlotte Bevan, working on the engineering of synthetic cells that can respond to their environment. He was awarded the 2020 Katherine Burr Blodgett Award from the RSC & SCI for this work.

After undertaking an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship, James was appointed as Departmental Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London. There he developed his research interests in developing automated, robotic methods to produce and characterize synthetic cells, as well as interface them with living systems for bioengineering and medical applications. James’ work has been funded by research awards from EPSRC, BBSRC, Cancer Research UK and Prostate Cancer UK.

James has significant interests in community building for synthetic biology and synthetic cells, and is co-director of the fabriCELL Network for Synthetic Cell Science, co-leader of the JST-BBSRC-funded Japan-UK Synergy Research Consortium and a member of the European SynCell-EU and global Build-a-Cell research networks.

Research

• Synthetic Cells
• Closed-loop discovery
• Microfluidics
• Biomedical translation of synthetic cells.

Research in the Hindley groups takes a multidisciplinary approach to construct bioinspired nano and microsystems known as synthetic cells. By utilising molecular self-assembly, and interfacing compartments with other (bio)molecules, synthetic cells can be constructed with the ability to mimic the architectures, functions and behaviours of biology. We have significant experience in using protein networks, synthetic functional groups and nanoparticle-biomembrane interfaces to create stimuli-responsive synthetic cells that can be remote controlled by the user, as well as environment-responsive synthetic cells that can respond to molecular triggers in their local vicinity.

By incorporating microfluidics and robotics, we aim to create closed-loop systems to both discover new functionality in synthetic cells as well as optimize their ability to undertake user-specified functions (e.g., environment sensing and triggered release). In doing so, we aim to use synthetic cells to study aspects of fundamental biology, as well as create new biotechnologies for application in diverse applications, with a particular focus in biomedicine.