Alexander West
@craftycarbene.bsky.social
š¤ 436
š„ 317
š 10
Chemoproteomics Scientist at EmpressTx Harvard CCB alum from the Woo Lab
Iāve been really liking
@acs.org
ās youtube channel lately. Itās cool to see chemistry content on the platform thatās more serious than Nile Red, etc, but still entertaining to normal people.
youtube.com/shorts/DW5Ur...
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An excretory puzzle | Headline Science
YouTube video by American Chemical Society
https://youtube.com/shorts/DW5Ur3erDE4?si=tEsrhZbrDtI9mxU8
about 2 months ago
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Alexander West
Roland Hatzenpichler
3 months ago
āThe prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.ā
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U.S. Congress considers sweeping ban on Chinese collaborations
Researchers speak out against proposal that would bar funding for U.S. scientists working with Chinese partners or training Chinese students
https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-congress-considers-sweeping-ban-chinese-collaborations
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Alexander West
Indivisible āš
4 months ago
š Boston, you are beautiful.
#NoKings
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Carl Zimmer
5 months ago
Today my
@nytimes.com
colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this yearās cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link:
nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
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https://nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
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Alexander West
Derek Lowe
7 months ago
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An mRNA Crime
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-crime
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Alexander West
Eric Topol
7 months ago
RFK Jr and HHS just ended all US supported mRNA vaccine development
www.hhs.gov/press-room/h...
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https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-winds-down-mrna-development-under-barda.html
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Keri Backus
7 months ago
Daily Bruin article about the ~800 frozen grants at UCLA including some from my lab
dailybruin.com/2025/08/02/a...
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About 800 NIH, NSF research grants suspended following UCLA federal funding cuts - Daily Bruin
About 800 research grants have been suspended at UCLA, according to a Friday email from Vice Chancellor for Research and Creative Activities Roger Wakimoto. Wakimoto said in the email, which was sent ...
https://dailybruin.com/2025/08/02/about-800-nih-nsf-research-grants-suspended-following-ucla-federal-funding-cuts
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Alexander West
Chris Parker
7 months ago
Excited to share a new preprint from the lab. We show that PTMs like phosphorylation & glycosylation dynamically reshape proteome-wide ligandability in cells, including proteins like KRAS. Great collaboration with the Huang Lab,
@forlilab.bsky.social
and BMS.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Post-Translational Modifications Remodel Proteome-Wide Ligandability
Post-translational modifications (PTMs) vastly expand the diversity of human proteome, dynamically reshaping protein activity, interactions, and localization in response to environmental, pharmacologi...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.667978v1
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Derek Lowe
7 months ago
What, about 2 1/2 months?
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Vinay Prasad: That Was Fast
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vinay-prasad-was-fast
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Alexander West
Matt Bogyo
7 months ago
Our paper outlining a new method for identifying selective protease substrates by phage display is finally out. Nice work from
@mbarniolx.bsky.social
.
pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....
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https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.5c04424
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Alexander West
Eric Topol
8 months ago
Summary Table of the massive defunding of biomedical research in the United States
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
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Keith Hornberger
8 months ago
Target Engagement Assays in Early Drug Discovery
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Target Engagement Assays in Early Drug Discovery
In target-based drug discovery, quantification of target engagement is required to build structureāactivity relationships and develop a potent clinical candidate. Target engagement data also provides ...
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.4c03115
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Alexander West
Helena Klara Jambor
8 months ago
I gave in! After students asking for it, I now made a simple figure design checklist. To help all scientists w/o graphic skills create clear, accessible, and truthful charts! -> Out in @nature Cell Biology:
rdcu.be/erwl4
#DataVisualization
#PhD
#SciComm
Thx for review
@bethcimini.bsky.social
+ 2
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A checklist for designing and improving the visualization of scientific data
Nature Cell Biology - Creating clear and engaging scientific figures is crucial to communicate complex data. In this Comment, I condense principles from design, visual perception and data...
https://rdcu.be/erwl4
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Derek Lowe
9 months ago
The administrationās budget proposal is a disaster in so many ways, but it is most certainly a direct assault on US science. Nothing like it has ever been seen before, and it means that we will have voluntarily stepped aside from a leading role in the scientific progress of the entire human race.
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The Continuing Crisis, Part XV: The Horrendous Trump Budget
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/continuing-crisis-part-xv-horrendous-trump-budget
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Alexander West
Eric Topol
9 months ago
The gutting of US biomedical research with loss of ~2,500 grants affecting research for cancer, Alzheimerās, infectious disease, global health and much more
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
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Iām surprised Thermo would name their new Astral the āZoomā when their whole company uses Microsoft Teams
add a skeleton here at some point
9 months ago
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Alexander West
Michael MacCoss
9 months ago
New Preprint ... This was a bit different of a project than what we normally do for hardware comparisons. I think there is a lot of potential in the methods mentioned here for calibrating the instrument response to a common scale. Nice work by
@chrhsu.bsky.social
!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Evaluation of an Orbitrap Astral Zoom mass spectrometer prototype for quantitative proteomics - beyond identification lists
Mass spectrometry instrumentation continues to evolve rapidly, yet quantifying these advances beyond conventional peptide and protein detections remains challenging. Here, we evaluate a modified Orbit...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.30.657132v1
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Josh Marshall
9 months ago
I've pitched versions of this idea to a number of NIH scientists, as well as university researchers over the last six weeks or so. So I decided to put it together into a post.
add a skeleton here at some point
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Steven Cheng
9 months ago
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
"In this study, we describe a personalized base-editing therapy wholly developed in the 6-month span after a patientās birth."
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Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease | NEJM
Base editors can correct disease-causing genetic variants. After a neonate had received a diagnosis of severe carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency, a disease with an estimated 50% mortality ...
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2504747
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Alexander West
Michael Baym
9 months ago
Yesterday, the NIH R35 āOutstanding Investigatorā grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab
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Zhi Lindsey Lin
11 months ago
Excited to share that our cell surface proteome review is now online on Chemical Reviews! š„° We highlight recent advances of techniques mapping cell surface protein expression, protein-protein interactions, extracellular PTMs and MHC complexes.
@jimwellsucsf.bsky.social
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
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Engineered Proteins and Chemical Tools to Probe the Cell Surface Proteome
The cell surface proteome, or surfaceome, is the hub for cells to interact and communicate with the outside world. Many disease-associated changes are hard-wired within the surfaceome, yet approved drugs target less than 50 cell surface proteins. In the past decade, the proteomics community has made significant strides in developing new technologies tailored for studying the surfaceome in all its complexity. In this review, we first dive into the unique characteristics and functions of the surfaceome, emphasizing the necessity for specialized labeling, enrichment, and proteomic approaches. An overview of surfaceomics methods is provided, detailing techniques to measure changes in protein expression and how this leads to novel target discovery. Next, we highlight advances in proximity labeling proteomics (PLP), showcasing how various enzymatic and photoaffinity proximity labeling techniques can map proteināprotein interactions and membrane protein complexes on the cell surface. We then review the role of extracellular post-translational modifications, focusing on cell surface glycosylation, proteolytic remodeling, and the secretome. Finally, we discuss methods for identifying tumor-specific peptide MHC complexes and how they have shaped therapeutic development. This emerging field of neo-protein epitopes is constantly evolving, where targets are identified at the proteome level and encompass defined disease-associated PTMs, complexes, and dysregulated cellular and tissue locations. Given the functional importance of the surfaceome for biology and therapy, we view surfaceomics as a critical piece of this quest for neo-epitope target discovery.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrev.4c00554
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Alexander West
Women in TPD & Induced Proximity
11 months ago
New preprint out co-led by Hannah Lloyd and Christina Woo at Harvard along with colleagues at the Broad and CeTPD Dundee gives insight on how to detect and discover native substrates of CRBN!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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A method for the detection and enrichment of endogenous cereblon substrates
C-Terminal cyclic imides are posttranslational modifications on proteins that are recognized and removed by the E3 ligase substrate adapter cereblon (CRBN). Despite the observation of these modificati...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.24.645063v1
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Alexander West
JesperOlsenLab
11 months ago
š Excited to share our latest article in
#singlecell
proteomics published in Cell! We've developed SC-pSILAC to simultaneously measure protein turnover and abundance in single cells, unlocking the first large-scale, 2D proteomic insights at single-cell resolution!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
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Global analysis of protein turnover dynamics in single cells
The SC-pSILAC method enables single-cell measurement of both protein abundance and turnover, providing notable advances in the depth and versatility of proteomic technologies.
https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cell.com%2Fcell%2Ffulltext%2FS0092-8674(25)00275-2&data=05%7C02%7Cjesper.olsen%40cpr.ku.dk%7C3b3f777e06c9459d3ccc08dd7063ed3d%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C638790296689327779%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=TzrM0qoZXUTiWRtCKKSapdvxDg13fIV9ZezbvG%2FI%2B8U%3D&reserved=0
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Alexander West
Women in TPD & Induced Proximity
11 months ago
Congratulations Breanna Zerfas and teams at DFCI on this linkerless PROTAC degrading and ER-stress transmembrane protein IRE1α with CRBN!
pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...
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Structure-guided design of a truncated heterobivalent chemical probe degrader of IRE1α
IRE1α is an ER protein involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR) and dysregulation of the ER stress pathway has been implicated in several diseases. Inhibitors of the cytoplasmic endonuclease or...
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2025/md/d5md00028a
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Alexander West
Carolyn Bertozzi
11 months ago
Discovery of a cool new anti-fungal natural project with new
#lipidtime
mechanism!
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Alexander West
Mark Levin
11 months ago
It's finally in the Federal Register! 2 months late is better than never!
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Alexander West
NPR
12 months ago
JUST IN: Thousands of probationary federal employees fired by the Trump administration must be offered job reinstatement within the next week, a district judge in San Francisco has ruled, because they were terminated unlawfully.
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Thousands of fired federal workers must be offered reinstatement, a judge rules
Thousands of probationary federal employees fired by the Trump administration must be offered job reinstatement within the next week, a district judge in San Francisco has ruled, because they were ter...
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5325959/federal-employees-court-firing
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Alexander West
Carolyn Bertozzi
12 months ago
We are in a biotech space race, cutting off basic science via slashing NIH and NSF funding robs the US of our competitive advantage: early innovation.
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Alexander West
Mark Levin
12 months ago
This is the main panel for F32 fellowships for organic chemistry - a pipeline of talent that is being choked off.
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Alexander West
Science Magazine
12 months ago
Recent discoveries are reshaping how scientists understand the neuroscience and biology of drug addiction, according to a new
#ScienceSignaling
Review that discusses the latest findings, future research priorities, and emerging therapies.
scim.ag/3DguvOY
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The biology of addiction
Insights into the biology of addiction and their potential translation into advances in therapy are discussed.
https://scim.ag/3DguvOY
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Payal JS, PhD
12 months ago
Not all reactions reported in scientific publications are bioorthogonal in true sense
#ChemSky
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
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Not So Bioorthogonal Chemistry
The advent of bioorthogonal chemistry has transformed scientific research, offering a powerful tool for selective and noninvasive labeling of (bio)molecules within complex biological environments. Thi...
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.4c15986
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Alexander West
Steven Cheng
12 months ago
www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
Lysine vitcylation is a vitamin C-derived protein modification that enhances STAT1-mediated immune response āHere, we report that vitC directly modifies lysine residues to form āvitcyl-lysineāāa process termed vitcylation.ā
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Lysine vitcylation is a vitamin C-derived protein modification that enhances STAT1-mediated immune response
Vitamin C directly modifies lysine residues through vitcylation, regulating STAT1 signaling and enhancing anti-tumor immune responses by preventing STAT1 dephosphorylation.
https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(25)00145-X
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Alexander West
Jeremy Baskin
about 1 year ago
List of NIH study sections that did or did not actually meet:
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Alexander West
Derek Lowe
about 1 year ago
Biopharma companies and CEOs are keeping their heads down at their own peril. They should speak up about whatās happening to the NIH and other science agencies before itās too late. Silence gives consent. And no one should consent to this.
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Stand Up And Be Counted
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/stand-and-be-counted
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Steven Cheng
about 1 year ago
Return to Flatland "Fifteen years ago, an analysis of drug molecules ... suggested that increased three-dimensional character was a marker of greater success. Now, we perform a similar analysis ... to see if the trends observed then still hold today"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Return to Flatland - Nature Reviews Chemistry
Fifteen years ago, an analysis of drug molecules moving through the stages of clinical development suggested that increased three-dimensional character was a marker of greater success. Now, we perform...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41570-025-00688-5
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Alexander West
Dan Nomura
about 1 year ago
Great review on covalent drugging of undruggable targets from Itaru Hamachi:
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
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Targeted Covalent Modification Strategies for Drugging the Undruggable Targets
The term āundruggableā refers to proteins or other biological targets that have been historically challenging to target with conventional drugs or therapeutic strategies because of their structural, functional, or dynamic properties. Drugging such undruggable targets is essential to develop new therapies for diseases where current treatment options are limited or nonexistent. Thus, investigating methods to achieve such drugging is an important challenge in medicinal chemistry. Among the numerous methodologies for drug discovery, covalent modification of therapeutic targets has emerged as a transformative strategy. The covalent attachment of diverse functional molecules to targets provides a powerful platform for creating highly potent drugs and chemical tools as well the ability to provide valuable information on the structures and dynamics of undruggable targets. In this review, we summarize recent examples of chemical methods for the covalent modification of proteins and other biomolecules for the development of new therapeutics and to overcome drug discovery challenges and highlight how such methods contribute toward the drugging of undruggable targets. In particular, we focus on the use of covalent chemistry methods for the development of covalent drugs, target identification, drug screening, artificial modulation of post-translational modifications, cancer specific chemotherapies, and nucleic acid-based therapeutics.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrev.4c00745?articleRef=test
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Alexander West
bioRxivpreprint
about 1 year ago
Expanding the Landscape of Aging via Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometry and Tandem Mass Tag (TMT) Integration
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.13.628374v1
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Whole worm expansion microscopy š
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about 1 year ago
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Alexander West
Bryan Dickinson
about 1 year ago
Back by popular demand, I present PPI Prediction Challenge #2. My claim: I AM SKEPTICAL COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES CAN PREDICT WHETHER TWO PROTEINS INTERACT. Someone prove me wrong (take two).
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
1/n
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PPI Prediction Challenge #2
For this protein-protein interaction prediction challenge, we present three target proteins: KRAS, RAF (the KRAS binding domain), and Mdm2. For each target protein, we are providing you a list of 8 po...
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe9sqJoSibeSfwDCsY7UHB6mCrkWWR142ih4vr4EIc1ATTnLQ/viewform?usp=preview
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Alexander West
Derek Lowe
about 1 year ago
That awkward moment when someone publishes a paper saying that they canāt find any evidence that your compounds bind to what your own series of papers say that they bind to. . .
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Do They Even Bind?
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/do-they-even-bind
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Alexander West
Steven Cheng
about 1 year ago
An engineered cereblon optimized for high throughput screening and molecular glue discovery from
@idikic.bsky.social
and PROXIDRUGs consortium
@cellchembiol.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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An engineered cereblon optimized for high throughput screening and molecular glue discovery
The majority of clinical degraders utilize an immunomodulatory imide drug (IMiD)-based derivative that directs their target to the E3 ligase receptor ā¦
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451945624004604
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Alexander West
Derek Lowe
about 1 year ago
The long and ugly story of Cassava Sciencesā supposed Alzheimerās drug simufilam is finally over. It should have ended well before this.
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The Cassava Saga Finally Ends
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/cassava-saga-finally-ends
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Vikram Paralkar
about 1 year ago
Researcher #1: I'm going to leave science! I just can't figure out what's causing degradation of my protein... Researcher #2: U B quittin'?
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Alexander West
Evangelia Petsalaki
over 1 year ago
PhosX is out!
doi.org/10.1093/bioi...
Leveraging the latest kinase specificity maps by the Cantley, Yaffe, and Turk labs and a rank sum statistic we created PhosX so now we can predict activities for nearly all kinases in your phosphodata, including the understudied ones. Check it out!
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Alexander West
Alexandre Hofer
over 1 year ago
Do not confuse...
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Alexander West
Steven Cheng
over 1 year ago
Excited to share "Opportunities for Therapeutic Modulation of O-GlcNAc"
@acspublications.bsky.social
Chemical Reviews with Alison Mody in the Woo lab, our contribution to an upcoming special issue "Drugging the Undruggable". (1/6)
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
#glycotime
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Opportunities for Therapeutic Modulation of O-GlcNAc
O-Linked β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) is an essential, dynamic monosaccharide post-translational modification (PTM) found on serine and threonine residues of thousands of nucleocytoplasmic protein...
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrev.4c00417
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Keri Backus
over 1 year ago
Chemoproteomics starter pack, thanks mostly to
@stephanhacker2.bsky.social
's strong network
go.bsky.app/JKJ1ZHt
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Alexander West
Derek Lowe
over 1 year ago
A bit of commentary about the RFK Jr.nomination, but more about dealing with this kind of story in general. Because weāre going to get a lot of them.
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On RFK Jr. And What We're In For
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/rfk-jr-and-what-we-re
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Virtual ChemBioTalks
over 1 year ago
For all the newcomers on Bluesky, follow this account for updates on the Virtual ChemBio Talks and already mark your calendars for the 5th Virtual ChemBioTalks on September 30th, 2025, with keynotes
@oconnorlab.bsky.social
and
@craigmcrews.bsky.social
.
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Beautiful O-GlcNAc review by
@scheng23.bsky.social
and Alison from the Woo lab
#glycotime
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
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Opportunities for Therapeutic Modulation of O-GlcNAc
O-Linked β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) is an essential, dynamic monosaccharide post-translational modification (PTM) found on serine and threonine residues of thousands of nucleocytoplasmic proteins. The installation and removal of O-GlcNAc is controlled by a single pair of enzymes, O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) and O-GlcNAcase (OGA), respectively. Since its discovery four decades ago, O-GlcNAc has been found on diverse classes of proteins, playing important functional roles in many cellular processes. Dysregulation of O-GlcNAc homeostasis has been implicated in the pathogenesis of disease, including neurodegeneration, X-linked intellectual disability (XLID), cancer, diabetes, and immunological disorders. These foundational studies of O-GlcNAc in disease biology have motivated efforts to target O-GlcNAc therapeutically, with multiple clinical candidates under evaluation. In this review, we describe the characterization and biochemistry of OGT and OGA, cellular O-GlcNAc regulation, development of OGT and OGA inhibitors, O-GlcNAc in pathophysiology, clinical progress of O-GlcNAc modulators, and emerging opportunities for targeting O-GlcNAc. This comprehensive resource should motivate further study into O-GlcNAc function and inspire strategies for therapeutic modulation of O-GlcNAc.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrev.4c00417
over 1 year ago
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