Prof. Satpal Virdee

Professor Satpal Virdee is a British-Punjabi chemical biologist, academic entrepreneur, and the scientific founder of Outrun Therapeutics. He holds a Personal Chair in Chemical Biology at the University of Dundee's MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC PPU), one of the world's most celebrated centres for protein and drug discovery research. Satpal earned a first-class honours degree in computer-aided chemistry from the University of Surrey, completed his PhD at Birkbeck College London under Gabriel Waksman FRS, and undertook postdoctoral research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge alongside Jason Chin's laboratory.

Satpal established his own research group at the MRC PPU in Dundee in 2011, where he has since pioneered transformative technologies for studying E3 ligases — the enzymes responsible for tagging proteins for degradation in cells. His lab developed engineered protein sensors (EPS), now central to the drug discovery platform underpinning Outrun Therapeutics. His work has been recognised with a Wellcome Discovery Award and cited nearly 2,000 times in the scientific literature.

In 2024, Satpal co-founded Outrun Therapeutics, spinning the company out of his Dundee lab with a $10 million seed round backed by M Ventures and MP Healthcare Venture Management. Outrun is developing first-in-class small molecule inhibitors of E3 ligases to stabilise proteins that are erroneously degraded in diseases such as cancer — a novel therapeutic modality that represents the mirror image of protein degradation. The company's lead programme targets hard-to-treat solid tumours.