Professor Mark Smales is Professor of Industrial Biotechnology in the School of Biosciences at the University of Kent. The group headed by Mark has a number of on-going projects whose objectives are to further advance our understanding of biotechnological products and processes at the fundamental biological or chemical level to enable their manipulation and control for improved (a) biotherapeutic recombinant protein yields and quality, (b) manufacture of gene therapies, (c) re-tuning of cell metabolism via synthetic biology approaches. His group in particular focusses upon the investigation of cultured mammalian cells for the purposes of producing biotherapeutic proteins for the treatment of disease, for the generation of diagnostics and for manufacturing of gene therapies. This includes upstream and downstream bioprocessing and embracing and utilising novel technologies such as genome editing to engineering cell systems and tune them for the desired use. A further aspect of his work is around mRNA translation and its control. He has a particular interest in how both initiation and elongation message specific control is achieved by the cell when under specific stresses, particularly in response to cold-shock.

Mark is Director of the Industrial Biotechnology Centre and a member of the Industrial Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology Research Group.