Two new preprints!

We are excited to share our new preprint in which we use the SPOTLITES platform to discover novel effectors for #targetedproteindegradation and other proximity-based approaches!

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.13.548759v1

After tagging 500+ members of the proteostasis network, we performed systematic recruitment of each tagged protein to a model target using a generic heterobifunctional ligand. Screening against both an endogenous and exogenous protein targets, we identified many interesting hits, including multiple members of the CTLH E3 ligase complex which we validate can be used for TPD!

This work was done in close collaboration with the Ophir Shalem Lab and builds upon their awesome endogenous tagging platform from Yevgeniy Serebrenik and Steph Sansbury– SPOTLITES (Scalable POoled Targeting with a LIgandable Tag at Endogenous Sites)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.13.548611v1

George Burslem
NIH Directors Transformative Research Award

Along with our Penn Therapeutic Mechanism colleagues, the lab has been awarded a NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award!

The PTM team is made up of George, Donita Brady, Terrence Gade, Luca Busino and Eric Witze and brings together expertise in translational medicine, mechanistic cell biology, and chemical biology with the goal of developing methods to quantitatively evaluate molecular features of cellular dynamics to improve diagnostics and motivate targeted therapy discovery.

Our Transformative Research Award (TR01) entitled “Unlocking the Chemical Space of Cancer-Associated Perturbations”, will create the Probe Enabled Activity Reporting (PEAR) platform technology.

PEAR leverages chemical biology, chemoproteomics, and chemical imaging approaches to profile alterations in the cancer proteome in response to therapeutic insults in patient samples as a means to predict therapeutic responses and discover unexplored liabilities.

See press releases here and here

George Burslem
Poster Presentation

Congratulations to Myles on an excellent poster presentation at the Penn Summer Undergraduate Internship Program (SUIP) Symposium as well as a talk at the 2022 Leadership Alliance National Symposium!

 
 

Good luck back at MIT and we hope you’ll come back next summer!

George Burslem
New Publication in Nature Chemical Biology

TAPBPR employs a ligand-independent docking mechanism to chaperone MR1 molecules

A new paper from our friends and collaborators in Nik Sgourakis Lab defines how the chaperone TAPBPR binds to antigen-presenting MR1 molecules and facilitates loading and exchange of metabolite-derived ligands on the MR1 complex.

George Burslem
New Lab Member!

We’re pleased to welcome Brianna Hill-Payne to the lab!

Brie joins us as a graduate student from the Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Group having previously spend time in various academic and industrial labs!

George Burslem
Prizes!

Congratulations to Jenna Beyer and Adam Green who both won prizes for their poster presentations at the recent departmental retreat!

George Burslem
New Lab Members

We’re pleased to welcome two new lab members!

Brianna Hill-Payne joins us as a Rotation Student from the Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Group having previously spend time in various academic and industrial labs!

Trenton Winters joins us as a research specialist following his BS in Biochemistry from University of Notre Dame and will be working on peptide-protein interactions and keeping us all organized!

Welcome to the lab!

George Burslem
New Publication

In this paper in RSC Medicinal Chemistry we used a catalyst free photochemical transformation to explore new chemical space for epigenetic drug discovery!

Read more here

George Burslem