Neal Devaraj: Blurring the Lines Between Chemistry and Biology

07/28/23 • 47 min

Back of the Napkin - Inspiring Stories from Biotech Pioneers

Neal Devaraj is a Professor and Chair at the University of California San Diego. In this episode, Neal talks about the innovations he has pioneered that are advancing the field of bioorthogonal chemistry. We discuss Neal’s work synthesizing completely artificial cells, designing new tools for labeling RNA, and his contribution to “click chemistry” by developing tetrazine ligation for use in live-cell imaging.

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Amy Ripka: Mitochondrial Dysfunction and New Ideas in Drug Discovery

Amy Ripka is the founder and CEO of Lucy Therapeutics. This back of the napkin conversation focuses on the importance of having the freedom to explore and generate new ideas. The approach that Amy advocates in this podcast has led her to pivotal new discoveries, including potential new therapeutics for Parkinson’s disease and Rett syndrome.

Lucy therapeutics: https://www.lucytherapeutics.com/

Paper - Playing Mozart to Chemical Reactions: https://jabde.com/2022/04/08/echocatalysis-playing-mozart-to-chemical-reactions/

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Michelle Arkin: Stabilizing Protein-Protein Interactions for Therapeutic Applications

Michelle Arkin is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is also a director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC), a chemical biology and drug discovery center at UCSF. Michelle has extensive experience in the field of drug discovery and is working on new and complex challenges to demonstrate 'druggability' of new target classes. Michelle is also the cofounder of Ambagon Therapeutics who are building on the concepts of modulating protein-protein interactions to find new drugs that address unmet needs in cancer, metabolic disorders, neurodegeneration and infectious diseases.

Small Molecule Discovery Center: https://pharm.ucsf.edu/smdc

Arkin Lab: https://pharm.ucsf.edu/arkin