John S. McMurray, Ph.D. 1986, University of Houston The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Department of Experimental Therapeutics Contact Information Biographical Sketch

Research Interests:

• Bio-organic chemistry
• Peptide and peptidomimetic chemistry
• Structure-guided drug design
• Protein-protein interaction
• Enzyme inhibitor design

Protein-protein interactions play important roles in signal transduction pathways and oncogenesis. Our work concerns the design of inhibitors of important protein-protein interactions with the overall goal of developing chemotherapeutic agents as well as reagents to probe signal transduction mechanisms. Our current targets are the STAT (signal transduction and activator of transcription) proteins. Our strategy is to find high affinity peptides to inhibit target protein-protein interactions, determine which parts of the peptide contributes to binding energy, determine the bound conformation, then combine this information to develop small molecule inhibitors that mimic the action of the peptide. Another strategy is screening a small molecule library to find leads. We currently have peptidomimetics that inhibit Stat3 activity in intact cells. We also pursue research in synthetic chemistry as part our drug design efforts. A tutorial in my laboratory would provide experience in one or more of the following topics: peptide chemistry, synthetic chemistry using solid-phase and/or solution phase methods, molecular modeling, NMR structure determination, and enzyme assays.

Publications