The Webinar Series will take place bi-weekly on: Thursdays
12 pm noon (EDT)
9 am (PT), 5 pm (GMT), 6 pm (CET)
We will use a single Zoom webinar registration for the upcoming seminars:
https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m7JJaw52T8yZYt8-ykL6UQ
Some seminars might be recorded and accessible for a limited time.
Upcoming Speakers
Georg Winter
CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine
May 13th, 2021
Identification and characterization of molecular glue degraders
Webinar registration: https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m7JJaw52T8yZYt8-ykL6UQ
Host: Mikolaj Slabicki
Georg Winter performed his PhD studies with Giulio Superti-Furga, working on elucidating the mechanism of action of anti-neoplastic drugs. He continued his training in chemical biology, working as a postdoc with James Bradner at the Dana Farber where he developed the first generalizable pharmacologic solution to in vivo target protein degradation via phthalimide-conjugation. He was recruited as a CeMM PI in 2016 where his research is focused on deploying targeted protein degradation to understand and disrupt fundamental principles of gene control in cancer. His interdisciplinary research lab is supported by several national and international grants and fellowships including an ERC Starting Grant. Dr. Winter’s contribution to the field of targeted protein degradation was acknowledged via multiple prices and awards, including the Eppendorf Award 2019 and the Elisabeth Lutz Award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Collin Tokheim
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
May 27th, 2021
How Machine Learning Informs Target Identification for Targeted Protein Degradation
Webinar registration: https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m7JJaw52T8yZYt8-ykL6UQ
Host: Katherine Donovan
Collin Tokheim is a post-doctoral research fellow in Shirley Liu’s lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research uses machine learning and statistical modeling of tumor genomic profiles to identify targets that may be particularly vulnerable to targeted protein degradation approaches. Prior to DFCI, Dr. Tokheim completed his PhD in Biomedical Engineering in Rachel Karchin’s lab at Johns Hopkins University. There he developed numerous computational methods to statistically implicate genes and mutations that likely drive cancer growth, culminating in the final analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas consortium. Dr. Tokheim has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Martin & Carol Macht award, an NCI NRSA fellowship, and the inaugural Damon Runyon Quantitative Biology fellowship.
TBA
TBA
June 10th, 2021
TBA
Webinar registration: https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m7JJaw52T8yZYt8-ykL6UQ
Host:
Alessandra Ianari (Broad Institute)
Daniel Bondeson (Broad Institute)
Behnam Nabet (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)
June 24th, 2021
Degron Tagging Workshop
Webinar registration: https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m7JJaw52T8yZYt8-ykL6UQ
Host: Mikolaj Slabicki and Radek Nowak
12:00 - 12:05 - Introduction
12:05 - 12:25 -“Systematic profiling of degron technologies to enable tools for genetic target validation” Alessandra Ianari & Daniel Bondeson
12:25 - 12:35 - Q&A Part I
12:35 - 12:55 - “Protein control using the dTAG platform“ Behnam Nabet
12:55 - 13:30 - Q&A Part II and Panel Discussion
Alessandra Ianari MD, Ph.D.
Associate Director in the Cancer Program at Broad
Alessandra is responsible for leading drug development projects in collaboration with the Center for the development of Therapeutics (CDoT/Broad) or through external collaborations. Her work focuses also on the generation of new chemical biology tools to validate new targets and to advance small molecule leads. Her current interest is to use the degron tag technology for in vitro and in vivo target validation and toxicology studies. Prior to that, Alessandra worked in the Cellular Pharmacology group at CDoT and at C4 Therapeutics on targeted protein degradation
Daniel Bondeson, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Associate, Golub Lab
Daniel's graduate work in the lab of Craig Crews at Yale focused on targeted protein degradation, where he published on the utility and mechanism of novel degrader molecules. He currently works on understanding and validating novel cancer vulnerabilities using targeted protein degradation and other novel technologies. His particular focus is on phosphate dysregulation in ovarian and uterine cancers as a novel therapeutic modality.
Behnam Nabet, Ph.D.
Behnam is the Katherine Loker Pinard Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Nathanael Gray at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Northwestern University and B.A. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. In his postdoctoral research, Dr. Nabet developed a generalizable technology platform known as the dTAG system to rapidly degrade any target protein. The dTAG system pairs potent small molecule degraders and versatile tagging strategies to achieve selective degradation of divergent proteins. This technology facilitates biological exploration and drug target validation in cells and animal models. Dr. Nabet is currently deploying the dTAG platform to investigate pancreatic cancer vulnerabilities and has been sharing the technology with the global scientific community in an open-source manner. He has been recognized with several scientific honors, including an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Claudia Adams Barr Program for Innovative Cancer Research award.
Xiaoyu Zhang
Scripps Research Institute
July 8th, 2021
Discovery of small molecule-mediated protein degradation pathways
Webinar registration: https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m7JJaw52T8yZYt8-ykL6UQ
Host: Xiaoxi Liu
Xiaoyu Zhang earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees at Zhejiang University. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry and Chemical Biology from Cornell University under the guidance of Dr. Hening Lin. His doctoral thesis work focused on understanding the biological roles of NAD+-dependent sirtuin enzymes and protein long-chain fatty-acylation in human cancer. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Benjamin Cravatt’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute and interested in leveraging chemical tools, chemical proteomic platforms and molecular biology approaches to broadly interrogate and discover E3 ubiquitin ligases that support small molecule-induced protein degradation. He has been recognized with a number of scientific honors, including The NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00), Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, Eli Lilly Asia Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award, Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund Scholarship, and Chu Kochen Scholarship.