| Honorific Prefix: | Professor |
| Sheena Radford | |
| Birth Name: | Sheena Elizabeth Radford |
| Thesis Title: | Domains and conformational flexibility in the catalytic mechanism of the 2-oxo acid dehydrogenase complexes |
| Thesis Url: | http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.236036 |
| Thesis Year: | 1987 |
| Spouse: | Alan Berry |
| Partners: | )--> |
| Website: | https://biologicalsciences.leeds.ac.uk/biological-sciences/staff/127/professor-sheena-radford http://sheena-radford-lab.uk https://astbury.leeds.ac.uk/people/professor-sheena-radford/ |
Sheena Elizabeth Radford is a British biophysicist, and Astbury Professor of Biophysics and a Royal Society Research Professor in the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Leeds.[1] Radford is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology.[2]
Radford received her BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham in 1984,[3] and her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge in 1987.[4] [5] Radford completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford.
Radford was a postdoc and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, then worked as a Lecturer in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds in 1995, progressing to Reader in 1998 and Professor in 2000. She became the deputy director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology in 2009 then Director in 2012 - 2021. Radford's research[6] investigates protein folding, protein aggregation and amyloid disease. Her multi-disciplinary research focuses include such disciplines as biochemistry, chemistry and medicine.
One major research focus is the role of protein misfolding in the onset of amyloidogenic diseases, including dialysis-related amyloidosis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Type II diabetes. This has been done with the use of native mass spectrometry, NMR and single molecule methods to characterize intermediates of protein folding and in amyloid formation.[2] A second research focus is on the folding of outer membrane proteins of Gram-negative organisms. Understanding the mechanics of how these proteins fold will help derive new antibiotics. A third arm looks at how the shelf life of pharmaceutical drugs could be extended.
Radford was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2010[7] and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014.[8]
Radford is a member of Faculty of 1000.[9]
Radford was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to molecular biology research.