Current projects focus on developing small molecule modulators against specific classes of targets, including kinases, GTPases, phosphatases, mutant alleles of MAPK family members, drug resistant forms of RTKs, chaperone proteins, and yet-to-be drugged pseudoenzymes. Below is a list of projects:

Molecular Glues to Target RAS-MAPK Driven Cancers

In this project, we will seek to build new compounds and next-generation drugs for targeting RAS-MAPK driven cancers by targeting the interfacial binding pockets of higher-order regulatory complexes.

An Integrated Platform for Personalized Liver Cancer Therapeutics

In this project, we work with collaborators to advance a multidisciplinary drug development platform that utilizes precision mouse models, tumor 3D organoids, and a proprietary library of small molecule inhibitors as a launching point to uncover biological targets, mechanisms, and new lead compounds for precision-based therapeutics in HCC.

A Chemical Genetic Approach to Exploring Novel Therapeutic Space for Colorectal Cancer

The goal of this multi-lab collaborative project includes verifying the functional importance of putative pro- and anti-targets in cancer models, to identify biophysical differences among these kinases that can be exploited for inhibitor design, and to generate KIs with polypharmacological profiles ’tuned’ for targeting KRAS-mutant colorectal cancer.