Professor Kevan Shokat (University of California, San Francisco/HHMI) gave the 2017 Donald Cram Lecture on April 27th.
Prof. Kevan M. Shokat’s lecture, titled “Chemical Strategies for Drugging Undruggable Targets in Oncology”, was very well attended, drawing many organic chemistry and biochemistry faculty and students. Prior to the lecture, a poster session and reception was held in the Cram Conference Room. Select photos from the event are below.
Shokat is a pioneer in the development of chemical methods for investigating cellular signal transduction pathways—with a particular focus on protein kinases and lipid kinases. He uses a combination of chemical synthesis and protein engineering to create uniquely traceable and regulatable kinases, allowing the function of over 100 different kinases to be uncovered across all disease areas including oncology, metabolism, and infectious disease. He is currently an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, where he also served as Department Chair from 2010-2014 at the UC San Francisco. Shokat is also Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
About the Donald J. Cram Lecture
Professor Donald J. Cram was a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who taught and conducted research at UCLA for more than 50 years. An endowment was established in his memory and it began sponsoring departmental events in 2002. The first of these was the “50 Year of Cram’s Rule” symposium. This was followed by the Cram Debate in 2003 and the Cram Colloquy in 2005. Professor Patrick Harran, the first Donald J. Cram Chair in Organic Chemistry, established and hosts the Cram Lectureship, inviting renowned, international chemists to meet with the faculty and students in the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The inaugural lecture was given by Prof. Francois Diederich (ETH-Zurich, UCLA) in 2010 followed by Prof. Andrew Meyers (Harvard) in 2012, Prof. Barry Sharpless (Scripps) in 2013, and Prof. David Milstein (Weizmann Institute) in 2015
The lecture was preceded by a poster session and reception in the Cram Conference Room.
Professor Michael Jung gave the opening remarks.
The lecture was very well attended, drawing many organic chemistry and biochemistry faculty and students.
The lecture took place in the newly renovated CS24 lecture hall.
Photos by David Gingrich/UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
