DMMC Course: EPIGENETICS: FROM MECHANISMS TO MEDICINES

1430-1520 Monday 25 June 2007. O’Reilly Hall, University College Dublin.

Chemical Biology Studies of Chromatin-Modifying Enzymes
Prof Stuart L. Schreiber (Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT)

There are many reasons to explore chromatin as a target for new therapeutics, for example, in regenerative medicine, metabolic disorders and cancers. There are also reasons to rethink the process of small-molecule discovery in general and, more challengingly, the process of drug discovery. This lecture will outline progress aimed at achieving each of these aims. The process being implemented aims to develop a kind of chemistry that anticipates challenges in discovery, optimization, and production. It also aims to develop genomic signature-based, state-switching assays and systematic ways of identifying the targets of small-molecule modulators of chromatin-modifying proteins discovered in these assays. Finally, performing discovery experiments in an open data-sharing environment allows the community to be more than the sum of its parts.

http://www.broad.harvard.edu/chembio/lab_schreiber/members/schreiber.html