GCCRI Seminar Series: Daniel K. Nomura, PhD UC Berkley “Redefining Druggability Using Chemoproteomic Platforms”
Event Date & Time
October 18, 2019Location
Greehey CCRI Auditorium, 2.160Event Details: 
About the Speaker(s)
Daniel K. Nomura, PhD
Professor of Chemistry, Molecular & Cell Biology, and Nutritional Sciences & Toxicology
The University of California, Berkley.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Chemical Biology, Analytical Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry: Redefining druggability using chemoproteomic platforms; drugging the undruggable proteome; discovering new therapeutic targets and drugs for human diseases; cancer; neurodegenerative diseases; immunology
The Nomura Research Group is focused on redefining druggability using chemoproteomic platforms to innovative transformative medicines. One of the greatest challenges that we face in discovering new disease therapies is that most proteins are considered “undruggable,” in that most proteins do not possess known binding pockets or “druggable hotspots” that small-molecules can bind to modulate protein function. Our research group addresses this challenge by developing chemoproteomic platforms to discover and pharmacologically target unique and novel druggable hotspots for disease therapy. We currently have four major research directions. Our first major focus is on developing chemoproteomics-enabled covalent ligand discovery approaches to rapidly discover small-molecule therapeutic leads that target unique and novel druggable hotspots for undruggable protein targets and incurable diseases. Our second research area focuses on covalent ligand discovery against druggable hotspots targeted by therapeutic natural products using chemoproteomic platforms to discover new therapeutic targets and synthetically tractable therapies for complex human diseases. Our third research area focuses on using chemoproteomics-enabled covalent ligand discovery platforms to expand the scope of targeted protein degradation to target and degrade undruggable proteins. Our fourth research area focuses on using chemoproteomic platforms to map on and off-targets of environmental and pharmaceutical chemicals towards discovering new toxicological mechanisms. Collectively, our lab is focused on developing next-generation transformative medicines through pioneering innovative chemical technologies to overcome challenges in drug discovery.