Tina Howard PhD

Director of Structural Biology

Tina Howard has over 30 years of experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical sector, with expertise in protein crystallisation and structural biology.

Tina Howard PhD Head of Protein Crystallisation

More about Tina

Enjoying all the sciences at school (secretly wanting to be an astronaut) Tina finally opted for chemistry degree, completing it with a research year in biochemistry. Subsequent research work has covered the range of sciences from biophysics to pharmacy and biological sciences. Fungal secondary metabolites, bio-transformation enzymes, and rainbow arrays of photosynthetic bacteria have all played their part. From the latter came lots of colourful membranes and beautiful protein crystals with structures and she was hooked.

Moving from academia to industry, she joined the Structural Chemistry Group at AstraZeneca. After over a decade applying x-ray crystallography to structural based drug design projects there, she joined Peak Proteins in its early days (employee number 3).

As befits the criteria for the company, she is also a cyclist (albeit part-time these days). She keeps active with Step, Body Attack and Body Combat classes. And weekends are spent watching kids’ sports, hiking up hills and dabbling in the greenhouse, garden and kitchen.

Development of Selective Phosphatidylinositol 5-Phosphate 4-Kinase γ Inhibitors with a Non-ATP-competitive, Allosteric Binding Mode
J. Med. Chem. 2022, 65,
Helen K. Boffey, Timothy P. C. Rooney, Henriette M. G. Willems, Simon Edwards, Christopher Green, Tina Howard, Derek Ogg, Tamara Romero, Duncan E. Scott, David Winpenny, James Duce, John Skidmore, Jonathan H. Clarke, and Stephen P. Andrews

Alkynyl Benzoxazines and Dihydroquinazolines as Cysteine Targeting Covalent Warheads and Their Application in Identification of Selective Irreversible Kinase Inhibitors
Journal of the American Chemical Society 2020 142 (23), 10358-10372
Kirsten McAulay, Emily A. Hoyt, Morgan Thomas, Marianne Schimpl, Michael S. Bodnarchuk, Hilary J. Lewis, Derek Barratt, Deepa Bhavsar, David M. Robinson, Michael J. Deery, Derek J. Ogg, Gonçalo J. L. Bernardes, Richard A. Ward, Michael J. Waring, and Jason G. Kettle

Antibody fragments structurally enable a drug-discovery campaign on the cancer target Mcl-1
Acta Cryst. 2019, D75, 1003-1014.
Luptak, M. Bista, D. Fisher, L. Flavell, N. Gao, K. Wickson, S. L. Kazmirski, T. Howard, P. B. Rawlins and D. Hargreaves

Heparan sulfates are critical regulators of the inhibitory megakaryocyte-platelet receptor G6b-B
Elife. 2019 8. pii: e46840
Vögtle T, Sharma S, Mori J, Nagy Z, Semeniak D, Scandola C, Geer MJ, Smith CW, Lane J, Pollack S, Lassila R, Jouppila A, Barr AJ, Ogg DJ, Howard TD, McMiken HJ, Warwicker J, Geh C, Rowlinson R, Abbott WM, Eckly A, Schulze H, Wright GJ, Mazharian A, Fütterer K, Rajesh S, Douglas MR, Senis YA.

Structure-Guided Discovery of Potent and Selective Inhibitors of ERK1/2 from a Modestly Active and Promiscuous Chemical Start Point
J. Med. Chem.  2017, 60: 3438–3450.
RA Ward, P Bethel, C Cook, E Davies, J Debreczeni, G Fairley, L Feron, V Flemington, MA Graham, R Greenwood, N Griffin, L Hanson, P Hopcroft, TD Howard, J Hudson, M James, CD Jones, CR. Jones, S Lamont, R Lewis, N Lindsay, K Roberts, I Simpson, S St-Gallay, S Swallow, J Tang, M Tonge, Z Wang & B Zhai

Design, Synthesis and Biological Activity of Substrate Competitive SMYD2 Inhibitors
J. Med. Chem.  2016 59: 11079-11097.
SD Cowen, D Russell, LA Dakin, H Chen, NA Larsen, R Godin, S Throner, X Zheng, A Molina, J Wu, T Cheung, T Howard, R Garcia-Arenas, N Keen, CS Pendleton, JA Pietenpol, & AD Ferguson

Structural basis of Lewisb antigen binding by the Helicobacter pylori adhesin BabA
Science Advances 2015, 1, e1500315
N Hage, T Howard, C Phillips, C Brassington, R Overman, J Debreczeni, P Gellert, S Stolnik, GS Winkler, FH Falcone

From Fragments to Leads: Novel Bacterial NAD+-Dependent DNA Ligase Inhibitors
Tetrahedron Letters 2015, 66, 3108-12.
M Hale, C Brassington; D Carcanague; K Embrey; CJ Eyermann; RA Giacobbe; L Gingipali; M Gowravaram, J Harang; T. Howard; G Ioannidis; H Jahic; A Kutschke; VA  Laganas; J Loch; MD Miller; KE Murphy-Benenato; H Oguto; L Otterbein; SJ Patel, AB Shapiro; PA Boriack-Sjodin

Structure-guided Design of Highly Selective and Potent Covalent Inhibitors of ERK1/2
J Med Chem, 2015, 58, 4790–4801.
RA Ward, N Colclough, M Challinor, JE Debreczeni, K Eckersley, G Fairley, L Feron, V Flemington, MA Graham, R Greenwood, P Hopcroft, TD Howard, M James, CD Jones, CR. Jones, J Renshaw, K Roberts, L Snow, M Tonge and K Yeung

Pyrimidinone Nicotinamide Mimetics as Selective Tankyrase and Wnt Pathway Inhibitors Suitable for in Vivo Pharmacology
ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, 2015, 6, 254-259.
J Johannes, L Almeida; B Barlaam, PA Boriack-Sjodin, R Casella; R Croft, A Dishington, L Gingipalli, CA Gu, J Hawkins, J Holmes, T Howard, J Huang, S Ioannidis, S Kazmirski, M Lamb, T McGuire, J Moore, D Ogg, A Patel, K Pike, T Pontz, G Robb, N Su, H Wang, X Wu, H-J Zhang, Y Zhang, X Zheng, T Wang

Discovery of 1-methyl-1H-imidazole derivatives as potent Jak2 inhibitors 
J. Med. Chem., 2014, 57 (1), pp 144–158.
Q Su, S Ioannidis, C Chuaqui, L Almeida, M Alimzhanov, G Bebernitz, K Bell, M Block, T Howard, S Huang, D Huszar, JA. Read, C Rivard Costa, J Shi, M Su, M Ye, and M Zinda

Employee Spotlight

I would love to say it’s all growing beautiful crystals and solving their structures, but in reality, there lots of asking and answering questions (scientific and operational). Then thinking ahead to more questions. I love being able to chat with everyone so easily in our big new space.

Most immediately before, I was doing a pretty similar scientific role in the Protein Structure group at AstraZeneca for many years. This was preceded by several post-doctoral research roles at Universities or Manchester (UMIST), Glasgow and Warwick.

Always been Sciences and Maths for me. Sure I would have loved Geography as well, if we ever made it out of the classroom. Keep thinking, I’d enjoy Geography A level as a mature student. If they’d invented computers at the time, I’m sure I would have loved Computer Science as well

An army of scientific heroes everyday contribute to all sorts of breakthroughs. Hard to narrow down a specific person or discovery.

Peak Proteins was not yet in existence when Mark first came by for a chat about his business idea for a company that produced proteins. His groundwork had highlighted a desire for determining structures alongside supplying proteins. It was an exciting and scary idea but a pretty quick decision to say “Yes, Let’s do it”. Never envisaged we would get to anywhere near employing 35 people and designing our own labs!

Has to be plural, spotting a beautiful crystal, seeing a dubious crystal produce a usable x-ray diffraction pattern, seeing a structure that has never been seen before or seeing a big blob of density to model the ligand in to. I could go on…

Spare time? – what’s that? Alien concept.

It’s a close call between people who sit in stationary cars with engines running churning out completely needless fumes and people who toss all sorts of random rubbish into clearly marked recycling bins, making them unrecyclable (if that’s a word).

An Indian Street food feast with the family. Vegetarian with spicy condiments washed down with craft cider or ale.

Replace hate and anger with love and respect for each other, small task?

A walk or cycle outdoors, the better the view the quicker it works.

Love all sort of music. New day new answer. Since I’m writing this on a sunny Friday afternoon, I thinking something by FatBoy Slim.

Some of the content of my record/music collection.

Leadership Team