Mauro Torres

Dr Mauro Torres is a Lecturer in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland, and leads a research group working at the interface of engineering and biology. designing living cells so that they behave in reliable, controllable ways

Background

Many of our most important medicines are made by cells, and a growing number of new treatments are living cells. Dr Torres's research changes how cells work by engineering the molecular mechanisms controlling how cells grow, produce therapeutic products, and respond to their surroundings, so they can be put to use more effectively. The same set of tools applies across very different goals: 1) Make biological medicines more efficiently, 2) Build cells that act as effective therapeutics, and 3) Develop tools for controlling gene expression. These goals focus of transforming how we make protein-, cell and gene therapeutics.

Dr Torres holds a PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Manchester, and undergraduate in Chemical Engineering. His interdisciplinary background defines his approach to problems spanning the two fields. Before joining UQ, he was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, which supported the establishment of his independent research group at Manchester. His current programme extends these principles to synthetic biology and to the engineering of cells for manufacturing biologics and advanced therapies, with industrial partnership as main focus for translating research into manufacturing settings.

Dr Torres welcomes new academic collaborations and enquiries from prospective research students.

Research areas

• Mammalian synthetic biology including designing genetic circuits that confer predictable, controllable behaviour on mammalian cells.
• Metabolic and secretory engineering for reprogramming cellular metabolism and the secretory pathway to improve the production of complex biologics in industrial cell lines.
• Cell engineering for advanced therapies including stem cells for enhancing their immunomodulatory function and therapeutic output.
• Biomanufacturing of cell and gene therapies for improving the production of the cells and viral vectors used in advanced therapeutic products.

Collaboration and supervision

Dr Torres actively seeks new academic collaborations, both within his field and across disciplines, and is particularly interested in working with researchers in immunology, disease biology, clinical translation, bioprocessing, and computational modelling. He also welcomes applications from prospective PhD and MPhil students with backgrounds in engineering, biotechnology, or the molecular life sciences. Enquiries, accompanied by a curriculum vitae and a brief statement of research interests, are warmly received.