Members
Dr. Sachdev Sidhu
Sidhu Lab: https://uwaterloo.ca/pharmacy/profile/sachdevs |
Dr. Jason Moffat
Moffat Lab: https://moleculargenetics.utoronto.ca/faculty/jason-moffat |
Dr. Anthony Kossiakoff
Kossiakoff Lab: http://kosslab.uchicago.edu/ |
Dr. Shohei Koide
Koide Lab: http://koidelab.uchicago.edu/ |
Dr. James Wells
Wells Lab: http://wellslab.ucsf.edu/ |
Dr. Sidhu joined the Donnelly Centre at the University of Toronto in 2008 after ten years as a principal investigator in the Department of Protein Engineering at Genentech, Inc. Genentech is the leading biotechnology company in the world and is renowned for developing technologies that have enabled the success of antibody drugs in oncology. Within this competitive and innovative environment, the Sidhu lab was at the forefront of new technology development and Dr. Sidhu was personally responsible for leading the development of phage-displayed synthetic antibody libraries. Thus Dr. Sidhu has extensive biotechnology experience and concomitant expertise in commercialization of new reagents and technologies.
The Moffat lab was founded in the Donnelly Centre at the University of Toronto in 2007 and has broad interests in the regulation of cell growth, proliferation and cellular state. Dr. Moffat uses genome-scale approaches and computational techniques to identify essential genes for cancer cell proliferation as well as genetic interactions that can associate function to unknown genes. More recently, the Moffat lab has working in collaboration with the Sidhu lab on high-throughput approaches for synthetic antibody development against cell surface targets and a genetic strategy to systematically perturb enzymes of the ubiquitin pathway. Dr. Moffat is a Canada Research Chair in the Functional Genomics of Cancer.
Anthony Kossiakoff is the Otho S.A. Sprague Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. The Kossiakoff group’s focus is on understanding the structural basis and molecular mechanisms that govern biological processes. Dr. Kossiakoff was a Senior Biophysicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1975 to 1983. In 1983 he moved to Genentech, Inc. to help establish the Protein Engineering Department and acted as it Director for 15 years. He was also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF during that time. In 1998, he was recruited to the University of Chicago to be Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He also served as the Director of the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. Dr. Kossiakoff is the PI of the NIH sponsored Chaperone-Enabled Biology and Structure Center and the Recombinant Antibody Network.
Shohei Koide is a professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. The Koide group focuses on the design and engineering of protein recognition interfaces and applications of such "synthetic binding proteins" to biomedically important questions. By integrating directed evolution, structural biology and bioinformatics, the group design highly functional but still simple combinatorial libraries of antibodies and antibody mimics. The group develops highly effective library selection methodologies for generating tight and specific affinity reagents for diverse targets and also methodologies for quantitatively validating affinity reagents.
James A. Wells, PhD, is a professor and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the UCSF School of Pharmacy, and a professor in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology in the School of Medicine. Dr. Wells was the founding scientist in Genentech’s Protein Engineering Department, where the Wells group was the first to develop protein phage display, and developed both naive and affinity maturation technologies on two-chain Fab formats. Dr. Wells later co-founded Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where his team developed novel technologies for fragment-based drug discovery, notably Tethering. At UCSF, the Wells lab focuses on developing engineered enzymes and small molecules to interrogate signaling pathways that drive regulated cell death. Dr. Wells is also the director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center at UCSF, a core facility that offers UCSF researchers access to modern small molecule discovery technologies including high-throughput screening, fragment-based drug discovery, and hit-to-lead medicinal chemistry.
