Jacob Capener
Creating Chemical Tools for Understudied Proteins to Advance Cancer Drug Development
Summary
For decades, drug discovery research has focused on only a handful of proteins out of the 20,000 proteins in a human cell. Often, the choice of a protein to study is influenced by the tools available to study it, rather than its actual importance. To expand the ways we can work on eliminating disease, our research aims to develop chemical tools for understudied proteins. Specifically, my research seeks to create a chemical that can deactivate an understudied protein known as CK1g that is associated with cancer. CK1g activity is known to be involved in disease-causing cellular events, yet it remains largely overlooked by biomedical research, with only a few articles detailing its functions. This chemical could act like a switch, allowing researchers to turn off the activity of this protein and gain a better understanding of its effects on cancer cell growth and survival. Developing tools like these spurs research on understudied proteins, providing new ways to combat disease.
Watch a Q&A with Jacob
I am honored that the PhRMA Foundation has recognized our chemical tool development project focused on uncovering the biology of the CK1γ kinases. This award will help us continue to interrogate understudied proteins as potential drug targets.
