Professor Marc Vendrell

Professor Marc Vendrell

Chair of Translational Chemistry and Biomedical Imaging

• Centre for Inflammation Research

Contact details

• Website: Academic Profile
• Website: Group website
• Work: +44 (0)131 242 6685
• Email: Marc.Vendrell@ed.ac.uk

Group Members

Dr Lorena Mendive-Tapia, Postdoctoral research associate

Dr Fabio de Moliner, Postdoctoral research associate

Dr Ferran Nadal-Bufi, Postdoctoral research associate

Dr Utsa Karmakar, Postdoctoral research associate

Dr Marco Bertolini, Postdoctoral research associate

Dr Jamie Scott, Postdoctoral research associate

Dr Lex Le Saint-Grant, Clinical Fellow

Rachel Snaddon, Research associate

Deborah Seah, PhD student

Kenneth Li, PhD student

Yanzi Zhou, PhD student

Man Sing Wong, PhD student

Yi Liu, PhD student

Fern Muangsopa, Visiting student

Pilar Suarez de Cepeda, Visiting student

Research interests

Vendrell started his independent career at UoE with the vision of bridging Chemistry, Biology and Medicine. In the last decade his team built a cross-disciplinary and cross-sector research programme to pioneer chemical imaging probes with unprecedented specificity. His rapid trajectory established him as Chair of Translational Chemistry and Biomedical Imaging in 2020 and helped him to lead the IRR Chemistry Hub as a first-in-class ‘Chemistry in Medicine’ Hub with 40+ investigators working collaboratively to catalyse innovation in physical and life sciences. His team has been leading in the chemical development of targeted fluorophores for bioimaging. One of the main achievements has been the design of a unique toolbox of activatable fluorescent probes (DYNAFLUORS^TM) to study immune cell function for the first time. This work was funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant, and his team has delivered 50+ publications in the last 5 years, including multiple articles in top interdisciplinary journals. In addition to producing bioimaging probes for general use, his team has invented novel synthetic methodologies (Nat Commun 2021, Nat Commun 2024) that have been recently recognised with the Bader Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry for eminence in Organic Chemistry.

The Vendrell team has translated fluorescent technologies for broad use within the scientific community. To date, 9 reagents have been licensed to 4 companies and are commercialised worldwide. They include fluorescent amino acids (Trp-BODIPY, Nat Commun 2016; SCOTfluors, Angew Chem 2019&2023; Se-NADA, Nat Commun 2021) and peptides (Apotracker Green, Nat Commun 2020). Vendrell’s passion and drive for interdisciplinary work were recognised with 2 prizes awarding outstanding innovators in Chemistry (Marcial Moreno Lectureship 2018) and young talents in the UK (SRUK Emerging Talent Award 2019). More recently, his team invented sensors for measuring inflammation in biosamples (Nat Commun 2022) that have led to the spin-out company IDxSense to commercialise new diagnostics with funds from an EIC Transition grant to accelerate the translation to the market. Vendrell’s leadership to push the boundaries of innovation, and work across disciplines and sectors to deliver impact resulted in his election in 2024 as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Scottish national academy.

Recent publications and projects - DYNAFLUORS

Biographical Profile

Marc Vendrell is Professor of Translational Chemistry and Biomedical Imaging at the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine in Edinburgh. His team has pioneered the design of smart chemical fluorophores for high-resolution optical imaging in live cells, tissues and humans (>150 papers), and built an ambitious research programme linking physical and biomedical sciences through competitive funding (over £10M as PI (>£30M as co-I), including prestigious European ERC Consolidator and EIC Transition grants). Vendrell is co-inventor of 12 patents, PI for 9 licensed technologies and several collaborative projects with industry and Pharma and has contributed to founding two spin-out companies on therapeutics and diagnostics. Vendrell has a strong record of mentoring and training the next generation of translational scientists, with several alumni holding independent positions in academia and industry. He has won numerous awards and distinctions, with some of the latest being the Bader Prize by The Royal Society of Chemistry in 2023 and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2024, the Scottish national academy. Vendrell currently heads the IRR Chemistry Hub at the College of Medicine in Edinburgh as one of the first global hubs for collaborative non-siloed chemical research to catalyse innovation in medical sciences and accelerate translational outputs.

Honours and Awards

Academic service

PhD examiner (×40, recently ~6-7/year)

Reviewer for 30+ funding bodies and 60+ journals (ACS, Nature, RSC, Wiley). 

Editorial

Editorial Board: Methods & Protocols; Smart Molecules.

Associate Editor: CCHTS, Biosensors & Bioelectronics, Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry and Frontiers in Immunology.

Among Top 5% and Top 1% Reviewers for Angewandte Chemie.

Advisory roles (academia)

A) External assessor for Faculty appointments at Max Planck (GE), Univ. Osaka (JP), Univ. Toronto (CA), Oregon OHSU (USA), Nanyang Technological University (SG), Emory Univ. (USA), Univ. Groningen (NL), Univ. Lincoln (UK)

B) Member of the SAB for the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK

C) Steering Committee for HDR-UK Turing Wellcome PhD Programme in Health Data Science (2021-4)

D) Panel Chair ‘Marcial Moreno Award’ (SP, 2025).

Grant committee membership (external)

‘Ramon y Cajal’ Fellowships (SP, 2020), SRUK Emerging Talent Award (UK, 2023-4), Kobe Prize (JP, 2023), MRC Impact Accelerator grants (UK, 2024).

Advisory roles (industry)

Member of SAB for Celtarys (2022-present) and Oxford Global (2022-present).

Publications

L. Mendive, …, M. Vendrell*. Spacer-free BODIPY fluorogens in antimicrobial peptides for direct imaging of fungal infection in human tissue. Nat. Commun. 2016, 7, 10940.

S. Benson, …, M. Vendrell*. SCOTfluors: small, conjugatable, orthogonal and tunable fluorophores for in vivo imaging of cell metabolism. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58, 6911.

N. Barth, …, M. Vendrell*. A fluorogenic cyclic peptide for imaging and quantification of drug-induced apoptosis. Nat. Commun. 2020, 11, 4027.

S. Benson, …, M. Vendrell*. Photoactivatable metabolic warheads enable precise and safe ablation of target cells in vivo. Nat. Commun. 2021, 12, 2369.

N. Kaplaneris, J. Son, L. Mendive, A. Kopp, N. Barth, I. Maksso, M. Vendrell,* L. Ackermann.* Chemodivergent manganese-catalyzed C–H Activation: modular synthesis of fluorogenic probes. Nat. Commun. 2021, 12, 3389.

J. Scott, ..., M. Vendrell*. A fluorogenic probe for granzyme B enables in-biopsy evaluation and screening of response to anticancer immunotherapies. Nat. Commun. 2022, 13, 2366.

F. de Moliner, …, M. Vendrell*. Small fluorogenic for peptide-guided background-free imaging. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, e202216231.

E. Kuru*, …, M. Vendrell*, G. M. Church*. Rapid discovery and evolution of nanosensors containing fluorogenic amino acids. Nat. Commun. 2024, 15, 7531.

E. Nestoros, …, M. Vendrell*. Tuning singlet oxygen generation with caged organic photosensitizers. Nat. Commun. 2024, 15, 7689.

M. Bertolini, …, M. Vendrell*. Chemo-click: receptor-controlled and bioorthogonal chemokine ligation for real-time imaging of drug-resistant leukemic B cells. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, 2024, 146, 30565-30572.

Collaborators

Dr Ahsan Akram

Prof Paul Brennan

Dr Ewen Calder

Prof Colin Campbell

Prof Neil Carragher

Prof David Dockrell

Dr Yi Feng

Prof Gwo-Tzer Ho

Prof Mathew Horrocks

Dr Takanori Kitamura

Dr Beth Mills

Dr Katie Mylonas

Prof Steve Pollard

Prof Adriano Rossi

Prof Manu Shankar-Hari

Dr Sonja Vermeren

Funders

European Innovative Council

European Research Council

EPSRC

Medical Research Scotland