Tetrahedron Symposium Speaker Biography

James Wells

James Wells received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Washington State University in Pullman working on chemical approaches to understand the myosin motor under the direction of Dr. Ralph Yount. He went to Stanford as a post-doc with Dr. George Stark in the area of interferon induced gene products. In 1982, he joined Genentech as the founding member of the Protein Engineering Department. During his 16 year tenure he developed some of the fundamental principles for gain-of-function protein engineering and molecular recognition. In1998 he left Genentech and founded Sunesis Pharmaceuticals based on fragment-based small molecule discovery technologies. Sunesis reached the point of being self-sustaining and focused on drug development. He returned once again to the discovery edge and joined the faculty at UCSF in 2005. He is currently using systematic site-directed chemical biology approaches to identify small molecule probes for functional sites on a protein surface. His group is also pioneering new proteomic methods for following proteolysis in cells. These approaches provide traction in his exploration of protein allostery and elucidation of protease signaling pathways involved in inflammation and apoptosis.