Daniel Nomura
The Nomura Research Group is focused on redefining druggability using chemoproteomic platforms to innovative transformative medicines. One of the greatest challenges that they face in discovering new disease therapies is that most proteins are considered “undruggable,” in that most proteins do not possess known binding pockets or “druggable hotspots” that small-molecules can bind to modulate protein function. Their research group addresses this challenge by advancing and applying chemoproteomic platforms to discover and pharmacologically target unique and novel druggable hotspots for disease therapy. They currently have four major research directions. Their first major focus is on developing chemoproteomics-enabled covalent ligand discovery approaches to rapidly discover small-molecule therapeutic leads that target unique and novel druggable hotspots for undruggable protein targets and incurable diseases. Their second research area focuses on covalent ligand discovery against druggable hotspots targeted by therapeutic natural products using chemoproteomic platforms to discover new therapeutic targets and synthetically tractable therapies for complex human diseases. Their third research area focuses on using chemoproteomics-enabled covalent ligand discovery platforms to expand the scope of targeted protein degradation to target and degrade undruggable proteins. Their fourth research area focuses on using chemoproteomic platforms to map on and off-targets of environmental and pharmaceutical chemicals towards discovering new toxicological mechanisms. Collectively, their lab is focused on developing next-generation transformative medicines through pioneering innovative chemical technologies to overcome challenges in drug discovery.
Major Research Directions
- Chemoproteomics-enabled covalent ligand discovery platforms to map and pharmacologically target druggable hotspots to tackle the undruggable proteome
- Covalent ligand discovery against druggable hotspots targeted by natural products for disease therapy
- Chemoproteomics-enabled covalent ligand discovery platforms to expand the scope of targeted protein degradation for drug discovery
- Using chemoproteomic platforms to map proteome-wide toxicological or therapeutic targets of environmental and pharmaceutical chemicals
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Nomura named Searle Scholar
Daniel Nomura, an assistant professor in nutritional sciences and toxicology, is one of 15 U.S. researchers in the chemical and biological sciences to be named a 2012 Searle Scholar.