About us
History and mindset of cryoDuck.
Mazdak Radjainia (Managing Director)
A story of constant change with one steadfast principle
Cryo-EM is a game of getting your ducks in a row. I lived it as an undergraduate student (Goethe University/Max Planck Institute for Biophysics, Frankfurt), a doctoral student and post-doctoral researcher (University of Auckland), as a Cryo-TEM manager (Monash University), and as a manager of pharma cryo-EM collaborations (Thermo Fisher, Eindhoven). This unwavering principle has been the one constant from the days of blobology, when cryo-EM could only produce low-resolution structures, to the resolution revolution that dramatically improved its utility for drug discovery; and it is here to stay for the future of ever-shaping cryo-EM.
Technology & people
Throughout my career, collaboration has always been at the heart of my approach to cryo-EM. The interdisciplinary nature of this field demands the combined expertise of individuals with diverse backgrounds, such as protein biochemistry, cryo-EM data collection, and computational methods. At the core of cryoDuck's mission is the commitment to connecting people, be it connecting them to or connecting them within the cryo-EM workflow.
Industrializing cryo-EM for better, safer medicines
A powerful method adapts to the research question, and never the other way around. I always believed that cryo-EM needs to bend to the needs of drug discovery. This involved showing that cryo-EM can be used to solve small structures like hemoglobin and enable targets as important as family B GPCRs like GLP-1R. More importantly, my passion is to make such successes accessible to industrial users, empowering drug discoverers to harness cryo-EM's full potential; yet, there's more work ahead to fully industrialize cryo-EM.
Recommended reads
1. Review article: The rapidly evolving role of cryo-EM in drug design.
2. Editorial article: Accelerating targets and modalities – how cryo-EM is transforming drug discovery and development.
3. Endpoints News: The dawn of venture capital-backed cryo-EM startups.
