Professor Ray Owens
Ray Owens obtained his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK. After postdoctoral work in London and Oxford, he joined Celltech, the UK’s first biotechnology company and became head of new target discovery. In 2002, Ray moved to the University of Oxford to run the Oxford Protein Production Facility (OPPF) the UK’s first structural proteomics project.
He is currently Professor of Molecular biology in the Structural Biology Division of the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, and leads the How Pathogens Interact with Human Cells Challenge and Nanobody Platform in the Rosalind Franklin Institute.
Nanobodies Discovery Platform
Nanobodies are single domain antibodies derived from the unique heavy chain only immunoglobulins of camels, llamas, and alpacas.
Disease X
The World Health Organisation lists Disease X (the name for a currently unknown pathogen that could cause a future epidemic) as a very serious threat to human health. To prepare for Disease X, we are building a pipeline to rapidly identify, and test nanobodies, for detecting and potentially treating future viral diseases
Understanding how Chlamydia adapts to life inside and outside host cells
We are studying how Chlamydia changes form to infect and survive in the body. Using advanced imaging and protein analysis, we track how its internal machinery adapts.
Visualising HIV entry one virus at a time
This project explores how HIV enters human cells by studying proteins on the virus surface and how they work together. Using advanced imaging, we observe how these proteins move and cluster.