Peptide Therapeutics and Membrane Biology group is led by Dr Henriques. She is a group leader at QUT based at TRI, a senior lecturer in Biochemistry, and an adjunct senior researcher at UQ-IMB.
Group Leader
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Dr Sónia Troeira Henriques
Senior Lecturer | Group Leader
Dr Sónia Troeira Henriques designs novel anticancer and antimicrobial therapeutic leads by reengineering host defense peptides to enter selected cells and modulate intracellular targets. Sónia’s uniquely combined expertise in therapeutic cyclic peptides, membrane biology and characterisation of peptide-cell membrane interactions led to the identification of cancer cell membrane features that can...
Research Staff
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Dr Aurélie Benfield
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Aurélie Benfield graduated with a Bachelor of Biotechnology Innovation with Honours (2005) and a PhD in Plant Biotechnology (2009) from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She has been a senior research assistant in the laboratory of Prof David Craik at the Institute of Molecular Bioscience (IMB), studying cyclic peptide...
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Dr Himaya Siddhihalu Wickrama Hewage
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Himaya is biochemist in training with multi-disciplinary expertise in exploring nature’s chemical diversity to identify and characterise molecular ligands for biotechnological advances including drug discovery. She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology (2013) from Pukyong National University, Busan, South Korea, where she studied the structure function of anti-inflammatory modulators from...
PhD Students
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Nicolau Barbosa Palma Filho
QUT Postgraduate Student
Nicolau graduated in Biomolecular Physics (2017) from the University of São Paulo (São Carlos, Brazil) and obtained his master’s research degree (2022) also in Biomolecular Physics at the same university. In 2023, Nicolau was awarded a QUT Postgraduate Research Award Scholarship to pursue a PhD degree at Henriques’ group under...
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Giuseppina Guida
QUT Postgraduate Student
Giuseppina Guida graduated in Pharmacy LM-13 (2019) from University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” (Caserta, Italy) and obtained her master’s degree in industrial pharmacy (2020) at the same university. She worked for two years as a Research Support Assistant in the field of proteomics at Prof. David Andreu’s laboratory at Pompeu...
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Henry Lamb
QUT Postgraduate Student
Henry graduated from a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Biomedical science, and an Honours degree, majoring in pharmacology, from the University of Queensland (2019 and 2020). He was awarded a PhD scholarship, funded by ARC CIPPs, to undertake his project with the Henriques group under the supervision of Dr Sonia...
Former Students and Lab Members
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Dr Anna Amiss
Anna Amiss graduated from a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Genetics, from the University of Queensland (2013) before undergoing her Master of Science at the University of Otago in New Zealand (2016). She was granted a University of Otago Master’s Scholarship to study the effect of current breast cancer treatments...
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Dr Grégoire Philippe
Dr Grégoire Philippe obtained his MsD in bioprocess, biomolecules and marine biotechnology (2015) from the university of south Brittany in France. In 2016, he started a PhD at the University of Queensland (UQ) at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB). Mr Grégoire Philippe research is focused on the design of...
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Dr Felicitas Vernen
Dr Felicitas Vernen completed a Master of Science degree in Biotechnology at the Technical University of Braunschweig (Germany) in 2013. After working as a research assistant, she started her PhD in 2015 under the supervision of Dr Sónia Troeira Henriques (main supervisor), Dr Nicole Lawrence and Prof David Craik (co-supervisors)...
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Dr Mar Forner
Mar Forner graduated in BSc Chemistry (2013) and MSc Biomedicine (2015) at the University of Barcelona. Since September 2015, she is a Biomedicine PhD candidate in Prof David Andreu’s group at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), funded by MINECO AGL2014-52395-C2-2-R and BES-2015-071843. Her research interest lies in modulating peptides to...
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Dr Ferran Nadal-Bufí
Ferran Nadal-Bufi graduated in BSc Human Biology (2015) from Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain) and obtained his MSc in Pharmaceutical Industry and Biotechnology (2016) at the same university. He worked during two years on the field of proteomics at Prof David Andreu’s laboratory at Pompeu Fabra University, where he developed his master thesis on methodologies...
Collaborators
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Dr Nicole Lawrence
IMB Senior Research Officer
Dr Nicole Lawrence obtained her BSc with majors in Biochemistry and Zoology (1991) from James Cook University of North Queensland, in Townsville Australia, before completing an Honours degree in Zoology (1992) and PhD in Tropical Health (1997) from The University of Queensland / QIMR Berghofer Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia....