Got an IDP target? We’d love to hear from you.
Intrinsically disordered proteins are implicated in some of the most important and least-treated diseases in human health, but for a long time the tools to drug them simply didn’t exist. At Bind, we’re building those tools, and we want to put them to work on the targets that matter most.
That’s why we’ve launched our Submit an IDP Target initiative. Whether you’re an academic researcher with a target you’ve been unable to pursue through conventional approaches, a clinician who sees an unmet need, a patient foundation with a disease focus, or a company looking for a collaborative partner, we want to hear from you.
There’s no fixed template for what a good submission looks like. If you have a disordered protein you believe is therapeutically relevant or scientifically intriguing, whether in oncology, neurodegeneration, infectious disease or another area, we’re open to a conversation. We’ll review submissions and explore where there’s potential for collaboration using Bind’s screening and characterisation capabilities.
On 19 March 2026, Bind Research officially launched to an audience of more than 300 scientists, investors, policymakers, clinicians and technologists at One Triton Square, London. The event was hosted by VentureCafé London, sponsored by ARIA.
The evening featured two keynote speakers. Professor Sheena Radford OBE FRS FMedSci spoke about why intrinsically disordered proteins remain one of the most fascinating and challenging frontiers in biology. These are proteins that defy the classical structure-function paradigm: they don’t fold into fixed shapes, yet they are central to some of the most important processes in human disease. The tools, she noted, are finally catching up with the biology.
Dr Dave Smith FIET FRAeS, UK National Technology Advisor, made a compelling case for why the Focused Research Organisation model matters, not just for science but for the UK’s ability to translate deep research into real-world impact. FROs exist to tackle problems that are too hard, too risky and too long-term for conventional funding structures and that is precisely why Bind exists.
The breadth of conversation in the room, spanning disciplines and sectors, reflected the growing recognition that IDPs represent a genuine and increasingly tractable therapeutic opportunity and the team at Bind would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who showed up and participated in the lively discussions.
We’re delighted to welcome three new members in 2026.
Dr Hannah Kiely-Collins joins as Senior Scientist, Chemoproteomics. A chemical biologist specialising in chemoproteomics and proximity-inducing modalities, Hannah previously worked at the Francis Crick Institute on translational projects spanning oncology, schizophrenia, and inflammatory bowel disease. At Bind, she will establish a chemoproteomics platform for IDP ligand discovery in native biological systems.
Dr Pijush Chakraborty joins as Senior Scientist, Magnetic Resonance. A structural biologist and biophysicist with deep expertise in protein aggregation, Pijush brings detailed mechanistic insight into dynamic assemblies involving tau and α-synuclein, and will build pipelines to study IDP–small molecule interactions.
Dr Laura Fletcher joins as Director of Strategic Partnerships and part of the leadership team. A life sciences commercialisation expert with over 25 years’ experience in biotech partnerships, licensing, and venture creation, Laura was previously at Deep Science Ventures and Cancer Research UK, and will lead commercial and non-profit partnerships to advance our mission.
Welcome to the team, Hannah, Pijush and Laura!
We have welcomed a further four new team members this last month into pivotal roles for Bind.
Dr Wendy Bushell has joined us as Director of Operations, bringing more than 15 years of leadership experience in UK and global biotech. We are excited by what Wendy will bring to Bind, with her deep expertise in scaling teams, establishing labs, and building the culture and systems that drive growth. Alex Messam has joined the team as Financial Controller, bringing with him excellent skills in financial reporting and developing finance systems and processes fit for a rapidly growing R&D team. Our laboratory team has expanded, with Anaïs Naretto joining the Biophysics team as Senior Scientist. Anaïs is an expert in producing challenging proteins and running the full suite of assays to test their interactions with small molecules. Growing again, Ananth Kumar has also joined our Biophysics team as Senior Scientist, bringing deep expertise in protein–RNA interactions and the production of challenging protein complexes.
We’re excited to have them on board as we continue to grow and push the boundaries of drug discovery.
Bind has taken up a lease for 2,746 sq. ft of state-of-the-art lab and office space at the Apex Building, Tribeca. In the words of our CEO, Gabi Heller, “We’re excited to be joining the vibrant LBIC community at the Apex. This space offers the flexibility and infrastructure we need to build a world-class not-for-profit research organisation. For a mission like ours, namely transforming drug discovery for disordered proteins, it’s crucial to be embedded in an environment that fosters collaboration, innovation, and scientific excellence.”
Located in one of London’s most vibrant innovation hubs, our new home positions us at the heart of the UK’s thriving life sciences ecosystem, with excellent connectivity and access to world-class talent. The LBIC space offers us the specialized laboratory infrastructure needed to develop our high-throughput measurement platform and to house our growing team of world-class scientists and technologists.
Over the last 3 months we are delighted to have welcomed five stellar new members of the team to Bind.
Dr Jasmine (Jaz) Cornish joined as Head of Protein and Drug Discovery, bringing deep expertise in disordered proteins and drug discovery. We’re excited for her to lead and shape our screening strategy. James Eaton came aboard as Scientist, Magnetic Resonance, adding essential method development skills to the team. His expertise in NMR will help push the throughput boundaries for this critical approach. Dr Sharna-kay Daley joined as Delivery Manager, bringing a sharp organisational mindset and scientific acumen to align execution with innovation as we scale. Most recently, Sören von Bülow joined as a Computational Scientist. Stephanie Pritchard has joined us as our EA & Office Manager, bringing nearly a decade of administrative experience supporting senior leaders across legal, not-for-profit, and corporate sectors. Sören is an expert in coarse-grained simulations of intrinsically disordered proteins and brings a wealth of expertise in computational modelling. We’re excited to continue to grow with such exceptional talent driving our mission forward to make disordered proteins druggable.
It’s been an exciting week at Bind Research! We’re thrilled to welcome three exceptional people to the team. Dr Acely Garza-Garcia, an expert biochemist formerly at the Francis Crick Institute, joins us as Senior Scientist, Biochemistry and Biophysics. Her expertise will be instrumental in building our dataset and advancing our platform. Dr Candide Champion a talented computational chemist who recently completed his PhD at ETH Zurich, joins us as a Scientific Software Engineer. His deep knowledge of molecular modelling and software development is a fantastic addition to our capabilities. Sam Patterson is a bright undergraduate student at Duke University who is visiting Bind for the summer to learn about proteins, drug discovery, and startups. Welcome, Acely, Candide, and Sam! We’re so glad to have you on board!
Earlier this week, we announced the launch of Bind Research, a new not-for-profit organisation dedicated to delivering tools and datasets to make disordered proteins druggable.
We are extremely grateful for the financial backing from the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Eric Schmidt, and other partners. You can read more about them here.
Although our public launch is new, Bind has been in the making for well over 2 years. During that time, we have been fortunate to have an incredibly strong foundation of supporters and scientific collaborators and have spoken with hundreds of people. While future posts will spotlight our scientific partners and collaborations in greater detail, today we want to recognise some key players who helped us behind the scenes build our organisation from the very beginning.
Bind Research began as a bold idea. Early conversations—especially with Sam Rodriques and Erika Alden DeBenedictis—made it clear that if we wanted to place tools and datasets in the public domain and collaborate effectively with both academic disordered protein researchers and the biotech/drug discovery communities, the Focused Research Organisation (FRO) model was a perfect fit.1
We are also thankful for the valuable feedback from Convergent Research—particularly Adam Marblestone—who has pioneered and championed the FRO model in the United States. Additionally, our huge thanks go to the team at Renaissance Philanthropy—especially Tom Kalil, Ronit Kanwar, and Jasnam Sidhu—for helping us reach potential funders and adapt the FRO model to the UK for the first time.
Bind would also not have been possible without the dynamic and well-connected team at Deep Science Ventures—especially Laura Fletcher, Dominic Falcao, and Mark Hammond—who helped incubate Bind Research for over a year before our formal incorporation. This support was essential to help us find our footing.
In the coming months, we plan to share details about Bind’s organisational structure in case others find it useful. If you are interested in starting an FRO in the UK, be sure to check out the new partnership between Convergent Research and the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).
London, UK – 11 February 2025 – Bind Research was today launched as the UK’s first not-for-profit Focused Research Organisation (FRO), committed to transforming drug discovery by targeting disordered proteins – an approach that promises new therapeutic avenues for diseases once considered untreatable.
Bind Research has been established with £12.9 million of support from the UK Government’s Research Ventures Catalyst programme, matched by support from industry, philanthropic, and charitable partners. Bind is grateful for visionary support from the UK government and from Eric Schmidt, former CEO and chairman of Google. Bind is also supported by NanoTemper, the Chordoma Foundation, and the Klaff Family Foundation. The government funding was officially announced at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.
Disordered proteins comprise over 30% of human proteins, playing crucial roles in cellular signalling and regulation. Highly flexible and constantly shifting between shapes, their dynamic nature has historically rendered them “undruggable” by conventional methods. Bind Research’s ambition is to turn these elusive targets into viable opportunities for drug development.
Bind Research will develop innovative tools for experimental and computational characterisation of disordered protein-drug interactions with unparalleled speed and precision. It will also build comprehensive datasets capturing the dynamic behaviour of disordered proteins to train advanced AI models capable of predicting protein-drug interactions, accelerating the drug discovery process.
“By integrating AI with both experimental and computational innovations, Bind Research is poised to lead a new era in drug discovery – one where once-elusive disordered proteins become accessible targets for life-saving treatments,” said Gabi Heller, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer. “Our FRO structure combines the innovative spirit of start-ups with the rigorous research excellence of academia, and we are assembling an interdisciplinary team dedicated to pioneering breakthroughs that serve the greater societal good.”
The FRO model adopted by Bind Research will create public assets that drive innovation and expedite scientific breakthroughs. This structure is designed to support the discovery of treatments for common diseases while also enabling the inclusion of neglected targets, such as rare and critically underserved conditions.
“Collaboration is at the heart of Bind Research’s strategy,” Gogulan Karunanithy, scientific co-founder and Head of Magnetic Resonance, commented. “We are committed to sharing our innovative tools and datasets with the broader research community, fostering an ecosystem that bridges academia and industry.”
“Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have already begun to revolutionise understanding of protein structures,” said Thomas Löhr, scientific co-founder and Head of Compute at Bind Research. “While tools like AlphaFold have advanced the prediction of structured proteins, their capabilities fall short when it comes to disordered proteins. Bind Research is seeking to fill this critical gap by developing high-throughput AI methodologies and building datasets that capture the dynamic nature of these proteins, potentially unlocking entirely new paradigms in drug design.”
Marcus Harrison, Chief Operating Officer, and Melissa Strange, Chief Financial Officer, have joined the expert Leadership Team of Bind Research in addition to Gabi Heller, Thomas Löhr, and Gogulan Karunanithy.
Bind Research
Dr Gabi Heller, CEO
press@bindresearch.com
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Mo Noonan, Jonathan Birt
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Bind Research is a UK-based not-for-profit Focused Research Organisation (FRO) committed to improving patient outcomes by transforming disordered proteins into viable drug targets. The organisation is developing innovative tools for AI-enhanced computational and experimental characterisation of disordered protein-drug interactions with unmatched speed and precision. Additionally, Bind Research is building comprehensive datasets of these interactions to create public assets that fuel AI models, enhance predictive capabilities, and accelerate the drug discovery process. Launched in 2025, Bind Research secured financing from the UK’s Research Venture Catalyst programme, with matched support from industry, philanthropic, and charitable donors.
Bind Research has officially incorporated, marking a significant milestone as it embarks on its mission to drive breakthrough advancements targeting intrinsically disordered proteins.