Chemical and Structural Biology Program (CSB)

 The Program in Chemical and Structural Biology seeks to bring the considerable strengths at UC Irvine in Chemical and Structural Biology to bear on cancer-related problems. The main themes of the program are to carry out research on cancer-relevant molecules at the level of atoms and bonds using biophysical and chemical techniques in addition to the development of novel tools for cancer research. UC Irvine has strong programs in synthetic organic chemistry, chemical biology, NMR spectroscopy, computational biology, and X-ray crystallography. A number of faculty have long standing and well funded research projects in structure-based drug design. The Program's main mission is to utilize this expertise in cancer specific research projects.

Tom Poulos, Ph.D., co-Leader of the CSB, holds the title of Chancellor's Professor with appointments in the Departments of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Chemistry. His current research focuses on protein crystallography, protein engineering and heme enzyme structure and function.

 

 

 

Gregory Weiss, Ph.D., co-Leader of the CSB, is a Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry.  His current research focuses on multi-dimensional combinatorial libraries to understand the emergence of drug resistance, membrane proteins to dissect cancer-associated proteins, and the biology-electronics interface to develop new sensors for cancer diagnostics.