Research

Our lab focuses on addressing unmet needs in disease treatment. We explore new drug targets by developing protein-protein interaction (PPI) inhibitors, identifying the inhibitors’ mechanism of action, and establishing assays to determine the inhibitor binding to the target protein.

PPIs are frequently targeted with small molecules, monoclonal antibodies (mAb) or peptidomimetics. The peptidomimetics can be developed starting from a peptide sequence either protein uses to interact. Alternatively, screening technics (e.g., fragment-based, high through-put or in silico screening) could be used to develop small molecule inhibitors.

Using structure-based and fragment-based approaches, we develop PPI inhibitors for targets associated with diseases. The protein targets we are currently interested in are HoxA9, Pbx, Meis and β-catenin – all of which are implicated in cancer.