Bi-weekly: Thursdays, 11 am EDT/EST, 8 am PT/PST, 4 pm BST/BDT, 5 pm CEST/CET
https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m7JJaw52T8yZYt8-ykL6UQ
Some seminars were recorded and accessible for a limited time on our youtube channel.
Upcoming Speakers
October 5th 2023
Host: Katherine Donovan, Hojong Yoon
Kheewoong Baek
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry
Assembly and disassembly of cullin-RING ligases
Kheewoong Baek is a postdoctoral fellow in the Fischer lab at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Prior to joining the Fischer lab, Khee was at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in the lab of Brenda Schulman for his doctoral studies. His research involved structural and biochemical characterization of neddylated cullin-RING ligases (CRLs) in action during ubiquitylation and CRLs undergoing substrate receptor exchange. Currently, he is trying to find avenues to utilize E3 ligases with chemical tools to modulate them as a therapeutic modality.
Lukas Henneberg
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry
Activity-based profiling of cullin–RING E3 networks by conformation-specific probes.
Lukas Henneberg is a PhD student in the labs of Brenda Schulman and Matthias Mann at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. His work focuses on combining probes specifically targeting active ubiquitin E3 ligases with mass spectrometry-based proteomics to uncover the regulatory mechanisms controlling E3 ligase networks. Before starting his PhD, he obtained a master’s degree from the Freie Universität Berlin, during which conducted research in the lab of Christopher Garcia at Stanford University.
October 19th 2023
Host: Mikolaj Slabicki , Hojong Yoon
UBR5 forms ligand-dependent complexes on chromatin to regulate nuclear hormone receptor stability.
Jonathan Tsai
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Jonathan is an Instructor in Pathology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Benjamin Ebert in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his MD and PhD from Stanford University. He is broadly interested in protein degradation and its effects on transcriptional regulation and has focused on nuclear hormone receptors as a model for ligand dependent degradation. His long-term goal is to understand and modulate the interaction between the proteasome machinery and hormone receptors with applications towards development, immunology, and cancer biology.
Jacob Aguirre
Friedrich Miescher Institute
Jacob Aguirre is a postdoctoral fellow at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland. There, he studies molecular mechanisms of protein degradation in the lab of Nico Thomä. He is particularly interested in how ubiquitin ligase recruitment can be tuned by small molecules and uses a variety of biophysical techniques, including cryo-EM, to study these processes at the atomic level.
Orphan quality control shapes network dynamics and gene expression.
Kevin Mark
University of California, Berkeley
Kevin received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco while studying with David Toczyski and continued his work as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Michael Rapé at the University of California, Berkeley. His scientific career has focused on determining the role of protein ubiquitylation in different eukaryotic systems using a wide range of biochemical approaches. His long-term goal is to understand how ubiquitin-mediated protein quality control regulates gene expression during development, and to modulate these processes using small molecules for the treatment of diseases, such as cancer and neurodegeneration.
Durga Kolla
University of California, Berkeley
Durga Kolla is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley in the laboratory of Michael Rapé. She is interested in investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying protein degradation pathways in development and disease. Her dissertation work focuses on quality control of protein complex composition in transcription. She would like to further her career by exploring the development of ubiquitin ligase targeted therapeutics and drug discovery.
November 2nd 2023
Host: Katherine Donovan
Luca Naef
VantAI
Current and future approaches of accelerating induced proximity through AI
Luca Naef is Co-Founder & CTO of VantAI, a Biotech focused on an AI-first approach at unlocking the potential of induced proximity. VantAI is a trusted partner to and has achieved multiple pre-clinical milestones with several major pharmaceutical & biotechs in the protein degradation field, successfully applying AI across a range of novel effectors and difficult to drug targets.
Luca received his BSc and MSc and signficant research experience across ETH Zurich, Standford and other global institutions, and has worked extensively in the AI field both as a researcher, software engineer and devising and implementing the AI strategy of global pharmaceutical companies as part of McKinsey & Company's QuantumBlack unit.
Andrew Potterton
CelerisTX
Using technology to drive structure-based design of proximity-inducing compounds
Andrew Potterton is the Head of Platform at CelerisTx where he is responsible for all technology efforts within the company. Prior to joining CelerisTx, Andrew spent 3 years at BenevolentAI leading a squad that developed internal tools for both TargetID and Chemistry. He completed his PhD at the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, University College London and Evotec in computational chemistry and machine learning focussed around GPCR drug discovery. Also at University College London, Andrew obtained a BSc in Biochemistry.