Protein Engineer - Biosensing
Melody is recruiting a protein engineer to create biosensors from allosteric switches, signaling motifs, reporter proteins, site-specific chemical modifications, and bioelectronic interfaces. The role spans construct design, wet-lab screening, device integration, experimental or computational protein design, and mentoring within a continuous molecular-monitoring program.
Bioelectronics Engineer, Wetware & Biosensor Integration
Melody is hiring a bioelectronics engineer to integrate protein biosensors, surface chemistry, hydrogels, membranes, and optical or electrochemical readout hardware into continuous molecular-monitoring technology. The role owns wetware integration strategy, diagnostic experimentation, directed-evolution workflows, materials development, instrumentation, and automation for real-world biosensing and eventual in-vivo studies.
In vitro bioelectronic models of the gut-brain axis
The human gut microbiome has emerged as a key player in the bidirectional communication of the gut-brain axis, affecting various aspects of homeostasis and pathophysiology. Until recently, the majority of studies that seek to explore the mechanisms underlying the microbiome-gut-brain axis cross-talk relied almost exclusively on animal models, and particularly gnotobiotic mice. Despite the great progress made with these models, various limitations, including ethical considerations and interspecies differences that limit the translatability of data to human systems, pushed researchers to seek for alternatives. Over the past decades, the field of in vitro modelling of tissues has experienced tremendous growth, thanks to advances in 3D cell biology, materials, science and bioengineering, pushing further the borders of our ability to more faithfully emulate the in vivo situation. Organ-on-chip technology and bioengineered tissues have emerged as highly promising alternatives to animal models for a wide range of applications. In this talk I’ll discuss our progress towards generating a complete platform of the human microbiota-gut-brain axis with integrated monitoring and sensing capabilities. Bringing together principles of materials science, tissue engineering, 3D cell biology and bioelectronics, we are building advanced models of the GI and the BBB /NVU, with real-time and label-free monitoring units adapted in the model architecture, towards a robust and more physiologically relevant human in vitro model, aiming to i) elucidate the role of microbiota in the gut-brain axis communication, ii) to study how diet and impaired microbiota profiles affect various (patho-)physiologies, and iii) to test personalised medicine approaches for disease modelling and drug testing.