Special Guest Lecture: Professor Bill DeGrado, De Novo Design of Protein Catalysts, Drug-Delivery Vehicles and Nanopores

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• Professor Bill DeGrado, School of Pharmacy, University of California San Francisco
• Thursday 05 March 2026, 12:00-13:00
• Seminar Room (Level 2), Dept of Pharmacology .

If you have a question about this talk, please contact comms.

The Department of Pharmacology will be hosting Professor Bill DeGrado for a short sabbatical.

As part of this sabbatical, Prof. Bill Degrado will be giving a lecture on Thursday, 5 March. All are welcome to attend.

Talk title: De Novo Design of Protein Catalysts, Drug-Delivery Vehicles and Nanopores

Speaker: Professor Bill DeGrado, School of Pharmacy, University of California San Francisco

Date and time: Thursday 5 March, 12:00

Venue: Pharmacology Seminar Room

Abstract: De novo protein design involves the creation of proteins from scratch, rather than by modification of natural proteins. A variety of functionally rich proteins have been achieved. Some functions, such as binding to protein interfaces have been relatively easy, because the interactions that stabilize interfaces are also used to stabilize the folded structures of proteins, and available computational methods have been well calibrated to this task. It has been more difficult to design functions that involve molecular recognition of small, polar molecules or dynamic processes. I will describe recent progress in the design of proteins that bind small molecules, and the use of these proteins in potential biomedical applications such as drug targeting, delivery and as drug reversal agents. We also have designed of proteins with highly efficient enzymatic activities, including ones that catalyze reactions at rates that exceed most natural enzymes. Moreover, we have designed proteins that catalyze reactions for which there were no known protein catalysts.

A second challenging area of interest in de novo protein design has been the construction of useful membrane proteins. I will describe the design of semisynthetic membrane proteins that function as ion channels, and their application to DNA and RNA sequencing.

Biography: Bill DeGrado is the Toby Herfindal Presidential Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. As an early pioneer of protein design in the 1980s, he coined the term de novo protein design. He is also active in discovery of small molecule drugs for a variety of human diseases. Bill is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and National Academy of Inventors and has held visiting fellowships at institutions that include Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, UCSF , City University of New York, and European Molecular Biology Laboratory. He also is a scientific cofounder of Pliant therapeutics.

This talk is part of the Department of Pharmacology Seminar Series series.

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