Rachel Harding - Assistant Professor

What is your area of research?

The Harding lab uses structural biology, protein biochemistry and chemical biology to study the molecular mechanisms of pathology of repeat expansion disorders, with a primary focus on Huntington’s disease. There is still so much we don’t know about many of these diseases and disease-modifying therapies are scarce. We collaborate with both academic and industry experts from around the world to uncover novel aspects of disease biology and identify new therapeutic targets.

What is your primary research challenge?

Every person with Huntington’s disease has a similar type of mutation in their Huntingtin gene, which means they make a slightly different version of the huntingtin protein. A key question my team are trying to answer is how this change in the huntingtin protein might alter the way this molecule works in people with Huntington’s, leading to the catastrophic cascade of events that result in this terrible disease. Huntingtin is a very large 3144 amino acid protein so this is very technically challenging with traditional laboratory methods of protein structure-function analysis.

What is your proposed solution to your research challenge?

My team are part of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), an open science organisation that specialises in early phase pre-competitive drug discovery. We believe that by sharing high quality reagents and resources, that enable study of proteins related to human health and disease, we can accelerate our understanding of human biology and the development of novel therapeutics. With this philosophy in mind, my team collaborates with scientists from all around the world, sharing ideas, data and reagents without the restriction, with the aim of moving the needle on research relating to repeat expansion disorders.

What is your impact to date?

The tools and resources my team has developed to study the Huntington’s disease protein have been shared hundreds of times with labs from almost every continent across the globe. In addition to making an impact in the scientific community, we are proud and honoured to connect with Huntington’s disease family members, through lab visits, different outreach events and the Huntington’s news site I co-run, HDBuzz.

Notable Awards

• Huntington’s Disease Society of America Berman Topper Family Career Development Fellowship
• Nancy S. Wexler Young Investigator Prize

Publications

Google Scholar

Keywords

Neurodegeneration; Drug discovery; Repeat expansion disorders; Protein structure-function;