Brandeis University chemical biologist Lizbeth Hedstrom received one of nine Director’s Transformative Research Awards this year from the National Institutes of Health under its High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program. The 5-year, $3.5 mil grant will support the development of new methods for drug design relying on targeted protein degradation. This emerging strategy has several potential therapeutic advantages over traditional approaches, including the development of more potent, longer acting, drugs.
The rational design of ‘degraders’ has focused almost exclusively on degradation induced when the target protein is modified with ubiquitin. In contrast, Hedstrom will be developing ubiquitin-independent strategies.
