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Leadership - Scientific Founders
Scientific Founders
Andrew Dillin, Ph.D. [View Bio]
Investigator Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Director, Glenn Center for Aging Research;
Professor, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Andrew Dillin is focused on researching the process of aging as well as the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Dillin recently identified a key regulatory pathway essential for the response to dietary restriction-mediated longevity, which is in turn a key pathway for proteostasis regulation. He received his Ph.D. degree in molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley, and carried out postdoctoral studies at the University of California in San Francisco defining the genetic pathways required for successful aging.
Jeffery W. Kelly, Ph.D. [View Bio]
Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Chemistry, Chairman, Molecular and Experimental Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute
Jeffery W. Kelly received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and performed post-doctoral research at The Rockefeller University in the area of chemistry and biology. Dr. Kelly is the Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Chemistry and Chairman of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute. His research focuses on the chemistry and biology of protein folding, function and maintenance and he continues to develop novel therapeutic strategies for diseases associated with compromised proteostasis. He co-founded FoldRx Pharmaceuticals along with Dr. Susan Lindquist.
Richard I. Morimoto, Ph.D. [View Bio]
Bill and Gayle Cook Professor of Biology, Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology, and Director of the Rice Institute for Biomedical Research, Northwestern University
Richard I. Morimoto holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, received a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Chicago, and did postdoctoral research at Harvard University. His research on the regulation of the heat shock stress response and the function of molecular chaperones addresses questions on the integration of organismal stress in response to physiologic and environmental stress and the chronic expression of misfolded and damaged proteins.
Dr. Hartl received his doctoral degree in Biochemistry from the University of Heidelberg. In 1985, he moved to the laboratory of Walter Neupert in Munich where he worked on the mechanism of protein transport into mitochondria, first as a post-doctoral fellow and then as a research group leader. In 1988, he initiated work that resulted in the demonstration of the basic role of molecular chaperones in protein folding. In 1990, he joined the faculty of Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York where he investigated the mechanisms of protein folding in the bacterial and eukaryotic cytosol. He reconstituted the pathway of chaperone-assisted folding in which the Hsp70 and the GroEL chaperone systems cooperate and discovered that GroEL and its co-factor GroES provide a nano-compartment for single protein molecules to fold unimpaired by aggregation. In 1993, Dr. Hartl was promoted to full professor with tenure, and in 1994 became an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 1997, he returned to Munich to head the Department of Cellular Biochemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) where he continues to study the basic mechanisms of protein folding in vivo as well as the role of the protein quality machinery in diseases of aberrant folding. Dr. Hartl has received several awards for his work on chaperone-assisted protein folding, including the Gairdner Award in 2004, the Wiley Prize in 2007 and the Rosenstiel Award and Horwitz Prize in 2008.
Scientific Co-Founders
William Balch, Ph.D. [View Bio]
Professor, Departments of Cell/Molecular Biology and Chemical Physiology, the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology and the Institute for Childhood and Neglected Diseases at The Scripps Research Institute
Dr. Balch has been working on understanding protein folding and membrane trafficking through the secretory pathway of eukaryotic cells in response to inherited human disease. Using a wide range of structural (x-ray/cryo-electron microscopy/NMR), biochemical, molecular and systems biology (bioinformatics, gene expression profiling and mass spectrometry) approaches, he has focused on dissecting the basic principles of the protein folding and trafficking problem to a wide variety of misfolding diseases including cystic fibrosis (CFTR), Gaucher Disease (beta-glucocerebrosidase), childhood emphysema (alpha-1-antitrypsin), and amyloid pathologies (Alzheimer's and Parkinson's). These studies provide new insight into the physiological and pathophysiological role of protein homeostasis (proteostasis) program in the function and maintenance of the mammalian cell in complex tissue environments encoded by the genome and reprogrammed by the epigenome.
Daniel Finley, Ph.D. [View Bio]
Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Finley’s research has focused on understanding how the proteasome recognizes its substrates, how it coordinates deubquitination with protein degradation, how it assembles, and how it unfolds and translocates the substrate in preparation for degradation. His research, in collaboration with Dr. King, has led to the discovery of a novel target, Usp14, which inhibits proteasome activity by decoupling ubiquitin tags from proteins, as well as small molecule inhibitors of Usp14 that increase turnover of neurotoxic or damaged proteins. Dr. Finley has been a Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School since 1988. Dr. Finley graduated from Harvard University in 1980 and received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984.
Alfred Goldberg, Ph.D. [View Bio]
Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Goldberg’s major discoveries have concerned the biochemical mechanisms and physiological regulation of protein breakdown in cells and the importance of this process in human disease. His laboratory first discovered the ATP-dependent system for protein breakdown, now termed the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. They first demonstrated the involvement of the proteasomes in this process and discovered the ATP-dependent proteases responsible for protein degradation in bacteria and mitochondria. Also of wide impact have been his findings about the mechanisms for the excessive protein degradation and muscle atrophy in many disease states and their elucidation of the role of the proteasome in antigen presentation. Dr. Goldberg’s lab first introduced the proteasome inhibitors now widely used as research tools, and he initiated the research effort that led to the development of the inhibitor, Velcade® (bortezomib), now widely used in the treatment of certain cancers.
Dr. Goldberg received his AB degree in 1963 and his PhD in Physiology in 1968 from Harvard University after attending Harvard Medical School and Cambridge University. His accomplishments have been recognized with many awards, including the 2003 Novartis-Drew Award for Biochemical Science, 2005 Severo Ochoa Award (New York Univ), 2007 Knobil Prize (Univ Texas Med School), and 2008 Gabbay Award (Brandeis Univ). He has also been honored with many distinguished lectureships, including the Nobel Forum Lecture (Karolinska Institute), Fay Lecture (Univ Massachusetts), da Vinci Lecture (Univ Milan), Rothchild Lecture (Israeli Acad Sciences), Centennial Lecture (Biochemical Society), and has been awarded honorary Doctorate of Science from the Watson Graduate School of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and University of Maastricht (Netherlands). Dr. Goldberg has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Institutes of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been a consultant to many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, has published over 400 scientific papers, and is among the 1% most cited authors in the life sciences.
Randall W. King, Ph.D. M.D. [View Bio]
Associate Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School
Dr. King’s research, which integrates chemical and biological approaches to the study of cell division, has focused on ubiquitin-dependent protein breakdown during mitosis. He was named Associate Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School in 2006, after serving as Assistant Professor of Cell Biology since 2000. Previously, he spent three years as the first Institute Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry of Cell Biology at Harvard. He received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Carleton College in 1988, followed by a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from UCSF in 1995 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1997.
Dr. Weissman is researching how cells ensure that proteins fold into their correct shape, as well as the role of protein misfolding in disease and normal physiology. He is also developing experimental and analytical approaches for exploring the organizational principles of biological systems. Dr. Weissman received his undergraduate physics degree from Harvard College. After obtaining a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with Peter Kim, Dr. Weissman pursued postdoctoral fellowship training in Arthur Horwich's laboratory at Yale University School of Medicine. He was recently awarded the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics and elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
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