Nick Massouh is a postgraduate student (PhD) in the Department of Chemistry at King’s College London. Nick completed his BSc in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Kent (UKC) in 2020, where his final year project focused on myosin kinetics in cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue. He then moved on to Mulligan lab at UKC to undertake an MRes, where he explored the structure and binding activity of members from the tripartite-ATP-independent-periplasmic (TRAP) membrane transporter family in bacteria and archaea.

After his studies, Nick moved to industry, where he held R&D roles at leading UK biotechs, including LabGenius Therapeutics, where he gained experience in machine-learning guided antibody engineering, and at Engitix Therapeutics, where contributed to drug profiling and target validation campaigns in fibrosis and oncology.

In 2024, Nick shifted back to academia to undertake a PhD project under the supervision of Dr Robert Jefferson. His project involves combining computational and wet-lab methods to rationally design peptide agonists against orphan GPCRs.

 

Research Interests: 

• G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)
• Membrane protein biochemistry
• Computational biology
• Structural biology
• Drug discovery
• Human disease

 

Thesis Title:

Rational Design of Peptide Agonists for an Orphan GPCR

 

PhD Supervisor

Dr Robert Jefferson & Professor Paula Booth