Professor
Colin
Robinson
Colin Robinson is Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Kent. Much of the research in the Robinson lab is focused on the mechanisms by which proteins are transported into and across biological membranes, with a particular focus on the bacterial protein export system, Tat. Current research in the lab involves the exploitation of bacterial protein export systems for the production of high value recombinant proteins, as well as investigation of the unique proofreading mechanism of the bacterial and plant Tat systems. Professor Robinson was Director of two RCUK Doctoral Training Centres during his time at the University of Warwick, has participated in four EU projects including Coordination of one, and is PI on research grants totalling £7.8M including a 4-centre BBSRC/InnovateUK IB Catalyst award and the newly awarded GCRF grant, which aims to build capacity for the production of animal vaccines and biopharmaceuticals in South East Asia.
Prof. Robinson is the lead PI for a GCRF project that aims to establish production capacity for animal vaccines and biopharmaceuticals in Thailand and surrounding SE Asian countries (https://research.kent.ac.uk/gcrfbiopharma/). Our consortium is developing subunit vaccines against porcine viruses, including PCV2d, using E. coli and yeast platforms for recombinant protein production. The GCRF project consortium compromises groups from the UK and Thailand whose combined expertise cover the entire pipeline for animal vaccine and biopharmaceutical development and production, including strain and cell line development, upstream and downstream processes, analytics and epidemiology. Other active areas of research in the lab include the development of vaccines and other technologies for disease control in aquaculture, including the use of microalgae in the development of nucleic acid-based antiviral technology for shrimp aquaculture.