Upcoming Speakers
February 2nd, 2023
Host: Breanna Zerfas
Behnam Nabet
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Targeting kinases for destruction in cancer
Behnam Nabet, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Human Biology Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. He received his Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Northwestern University and B.A. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. He performed his postdoctoral studies in the laboratories of Dr. Nathanael Gray and Dr. James Bradner at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Nabet’s laboratory is focused on developing strategies to target oncogenic signaling by controlling protein homeostasis. He pioneered the development of a versatile technology platform known as the dTAG system to rapidly degrade any target protein. The dTAG system facilitates biological exploration and drug target validation in cells and animal models. Dr. Nabet’s work has led to the development of selective agents targeting several cancer drug targets including FAK, PIN1, and DCLK1. These promising compounds inhibit critical vulnerabilities in translational models of cancer and are under continued development as novel therapeutics. Dr. Nabet has been recognized with several scientific honors, including a Claudia Adams Barr Program for Innovative Cancer Research award, an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Katherine Loker Pinard Endowed Fellowship, and an NIH/NCI K22 Transition Career Development Award.
Frederick Cohen
Nurix Therapeutics
Discovery and Optimization of CBL-B Inhibitors
Fred Cohen is Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Nurix Therapeutics. He has more than 20 years of experience in small molecule drug discovery, spanning multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, neurodegeneration and antibiotics. Prior to joining Nurix, he served at Achaogen, Genentech, and Tularik. Dr. Cohen earned his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Occidental College and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine.
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February 16th, 2023
Host: Mikolaj Slabicki
Steve Elledge
Harvard Medical School
High through-put interrogation of the UPS
Stephen J. Elledge is the Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Genetics, and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his laboratory at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and moved in 2003 to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics. He is an elected member member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His many awards include the Dickson Prize (2010), Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in the Basic Medical Sciences (2013), Gairdner Foundation International Award (2013), Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (2015), Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2017) and the Gruber Prize in Genetics (2017).
Dr. Elledge’s research interests center on genetic approaches to biological problems including the study of proteins that sense and respond to DNA damage, and regulate the cell division cycle and cancer. Through this work he uncovered a protein kinase cascade that is now known as the DNA Damage Response. He discovered F-box proteins and Skp1 and along with Dr. Wade Harper, uncovered the two largest families of E3 ubiquitin ligases: the cullin-RING ligases (CRL), starting with the Skp1-Cul1-F-box sub-family, and the RING domain ligases. He has also worked in unraveling the role of cancer drivers in the evolution of cancer through aneuploidy and how tumor suppressors allow cancers to evade the immune system. More recently Dr. Elledge has developed a suite of immunological methods, such as T-Scan, VirScan and EpiScan, that allows the genome-wide identification of epitopes recognized by B and T cells. He has used these tools to investigate the role of viruses in human disease such as Measles, MS and COVID-19.