Tim Clausen's lab part of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network
Tim Clausen, Senior Group Leader at the IMP, will participate in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network “ProofReading”, which is coordinated by Rosa Barrio at CIC bioGUNE – Centro de Investigación Cooperativa en Biociencias in Spain. The programme supports collaborative, international training networks that bring together academia and industry to tackle key challenges in biomedical research and associated training needs.
The ProofReading network will focus on Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD), an emerging approach in drug discovery that aims to harness the cell’s own protein quality control machinery to eliminate disease-causing proteins. By advancing fundamental understanding and developing new technologies in this area, the consortium seeks to open new therapeutic avenues for a wide range of diseases.
TPD represents a powerful approach in drug discovery. Instead of inhibiting disease-associated proteins, this method uses small molecules, known as degraders, to recruit the cell’s ubiquitination machinery and mark specific proteins for destruction by the ubiquitin–proteasome system. This strategy enables the removal of proteins that have so far been considered “undruggable”.
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network ProofReading, coordinated by CIC bioGUNE (Spain), brings together ten universities, four research centres, and eight industry partners. By integrating expertise from structural biology, biochemistry, chemical biology, and computational approaches, the consortium aims to develop next-generation degrader technologies and expand the range of cellular pathways that can be targeted for protein degradation.
The network will train eleven doctoral candidates through an interdisciplinary and intersectoral programme that includes international research secondments, hands-on workshops, and courses on transferable skills. In addition to scientific training, the programme places a strong emphasis on career development, mental health, and well-being in science.
At the IMP, Tim Clausen will contribute his expertise in working with huge, complex E3 ligases to the project. His work will focus on developing new E3 platforms and concepts for degrader development, exploring their potential as a novel antibacterial and antiviral strategy.
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