Thesis title: Developing protein-based biosensors for use in point-of-care and clinical diagnostics Principal Supervisor: Prof Kirill Alexandrov Associate Supervisor/s: Dr Zhenling Cui Expected final thesis submission date: Before 31 December 2024 CAB Research program: Synthetic Biology
Roxane Mutschler is a final-year PhD candidate developing protein-based biosensors for the clinical and point-of-care detection of heart failure biomarkers in saliva.
She holds a Bachelor of Biotechnology, majoring in molecular biology from the University of Queensland in 2020 with first class honours. Her honours research focused on improving nucleic acid purification technologies by optimising the surface chemistry of various materials for their direct use in downstream point-of-need diagnostics.
Her current PhD research is focused on developing novel monobody-based binding domains with high specificity to particular salivary heart failure biomarkers. She has extensive experience using phage and mRNA display; directed protein evolution techniques, which mimic the process of natural selection to rationally design and engineer proteins with desirable functions. These methods have allowed her to build numerous heart failure biosensors but also help establish a rapid and integrated pipeline for the ongoing development of protein-based biosensors for various industry applications and diagnostic purposes.