Tech Transfer – Brad Bundy Enzymes

Guests: Brad Bundy, Biotech  Mike Alder, head of the BYU Technology Transfer Office  The complexity of human life boils down to just 20 building blocks called amino acids. In a laboratory here at Brigham Young University under the director of Brad Bundy, researchers are trying to expand that vocabulary of building blocks. If they succeed, we could have better ways to treat cancer, better vaccines, and better way to sense the presence of hazardous chemicals in our environment.  “Proteins are the catalysts of life. They’re the things that make all the chemical reactions in our bodies. They are the reason that everything occurs,” says Bundy.  “Over half of the top grossing drugs are proteins,” says Bundy. “They are very exciting in their application.”  “Inside cells, if you want to try to recode, to try to put a lot of these manmade proteins into amino acids, it’s really hard to do inside a living cell.”