Research Bio

Dan Nomura is Professor of Chemical Biology and Molecular Therapeutics in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Co-Director of the Molecular Therapeutics Initiative and an Investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. Nomura's research integrates chemical biology, chemoproteomics, and medicinal chemistry to develop innovative therapeutic strategies for previously undruggable disease targets. Since 2017, he has directed the Novartis-Berkeley Translational Chemical Biology Institute, a collaborative research program focused on discovering next-generation medicines by leveraging chemoproteomic technologies. He has co-founded multiple biotechnology companies translating these discoveries into therapeutics, including Frontier Medicines, which applies chemoproteomics and machine learning to discover medicines for challenging targets, and Zenith Therapeutics, which is developing induced proximity-based therapeutics for undruggable proteins. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Frontier Medicines, Zenith Therapeutics, Apertor Pharma, Photys Therapeutics, Endura Therapeutics, Axiom Therapeutics, Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, Serinus Biosciences, and Ten30 Biosciences. In addition, he serves as an Investment Advisory Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health, an Investment Advisory Board member at Droia Ventures, and an iPartner at The Column Group. Nomura serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and on the Scientific Advisory Board of The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. In 2025, he became Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. Nomura received his B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology and Ph.D. in Molecular Toxicology from UC Berkeley under the mentorship of John Casida before completing postdoctoral training with Benjamin F. Cravatt at Scripps Research. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2011. His contributions to chemical biology and translational therapeutics have been recognized through numerous honors, including the National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award, the Searle Scholar Award, and The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research ASPIRE Award. His laboratory pioneers chemoproteomic technologies and induced proximity-based therapeutic platforms that redefine druggability, enabling the discovery of transformative medicines against previously inaccessible disease targets.

The Nomura Research Group seeks to redefine the boundaries of drug discovery by developing chemical technologies that enable therapeutic intervention against proteins and pathways previously considered undruggable. Our overarching goal is to discover transformative medicines by identifying new ligandable sites within the proteome and harnessing these discoveries to create entirely new therapeutic modalities. Traditional small-molecule drug discovery has focused on the limited fraction of proteins possessing well-defined ligand-binding pockets. In contrast, we leverage chemoproteomic technologies to systematically map functional and pharmacologically accessible hotspots across the proteome, dramatically expanding the universe of proteins that can be therapeutically targeted. Our research is organized around three complementary directions. First, we develop next-generation chemoproteomic platforms to discover functional ligandable hotspots throughout the proteome and rapidly identify covalent small-molecule ligands against challenging disease targets. These technologies provide new therapeutic entry points into proteins previously considered inaccessible to pharmacological intervention. Second, we engineer chemoproteomic approaches that extend targeted protein degradation beyond conventional paradigms by discovering new ligands, new recruitment mechanisms, and new strategies for selectively eliminating disease-causing proteins. These efforts broaden the range of proteins that can be therapeutically degraded and expand the biological processes amenable to targeted degradation. Third, beyond protein degradation, we develop entirely new induced proximity-based therapeutic strategies that reprogram protein function, transcription, signaling, and cell fate. By combining chemoproteomic ligand discovery with induced proximity engineering, we aim to create next-generation therapeutic modalities capable of regulating biology in ways that were previously impossible with conventional drugs. Collectively, our work integrates chemoproteomics, chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, and systems biology to establish a comprehensive framework for discovering transformative therapeutics against the most challenging targets in human disease.

Major Research Directions

1. Chemoproteomics-enabled covalent ligand discovery platforms to tackle the undruggable proteome
2. Expanding the scope of targeted protein degradation using chemoproteomic platforms
3. Discovering new induced proximity-based therapeutic modalities

Research Expertise and Interest

chemistry, molecular and cell biology, chemical biology, cancer, drug discovery, chemoproteomics, undruggable