URAP

John Chorba - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

PCSK9 chaperones the low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) to the lysosome for degradation, thereby raising circulating LDL (i.e. “bad” cholesterol) and accelerating atherosclerosis and heart disease. Despite its validation as a drug target, PCSK9 has proven difficult to drug with small molecules, at least in part because of its single...

John Chorba - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The LDL receptor clears atherogenic LDL particles from the bloodstream and plays a major role in cholesterol and membrane homeostasis. Through a genome-wide CRISPR interference screen, we identified novel regulators of the LDL receptor as potential therapeutic targets for cholesterol lowering. We have shown that CSDE1 is an RNA...

John Chorba - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     

A fundamental challenge in drug discovery is that any given therapeutic target requires its own customized strategy. The discovery of a recent compound that binds the human ribosome and inhibits translation in a sequence specific manner offers the potential to “drug” protein targets without the need for a traditional active...