Drug Discovery Seminar - Jetze Tepe, PhD

Tackling the undruggable

Drug Discovery Seminar

Jetze J. Tepe, PhD

• Professor

• Department of Chemistry, Pharmacology & Toxicology

• Michigan State University

Undruggable proteins are proteins that cannot be targeted pharmacologically. Undruggable proteins are deemed undruggable because they lack defined binding pockets and are therefore not suitable for traditional “small molecule-binding pocket” drug discovery approaches. These unstructured proteins are called intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). There are several notorious IDPs that have challenged researchers for decades but have still evaded pharmacological regulation. Some of the most desirable, but elusive, targets include the undruggable proteins amyloid-b, a-synuclein, and dipeptide repeats, which have been shown to drive the pathogenesis of many neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Over the last few years, our lab has developed a new therapeutic approach that prevents the accumulation of disease driving IDPs by small molecule activation of the 20S subcomplex of the human proteasome. This seminar will discuss our progress in exploring this new therapeutic strategy to target these undruggable proteins.

Date:  Friday, October 1

Time:  09:00 

Location IQ Building Lobby

Zoom:  https://msu.zoom.us/j/93812008875

Passcode:  937923

Host:  Dr. Erika Lisabeth (matheser@msu.edu)

Link to recorded talk:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHNz00bPjDI