TPCB Faculty
Thomas Sakmar, MD
Rockefeller University
Education
MD, 1982, University of Chicago
AB, 1978, University of Chicago
Research Topics
- Bioactive Small Molecules
- Rational drug design
- Chemical probe development
- Macromolecular Structure and Function
- X-ray crystallography
- Single molecule methods
- Chemical Cell Biology
- Cellular imaging
- Proteomics
- Biotechnology
- Protein engineering
- Nanotechnology
- Computational Chemistry
- Protein modeling
Therapeutic Areas
- Diabetes
- Neuroscience
- Virology
Recent advances in molecular and structural studies of G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) have revolutionized drug discovery. The Sakmar lab uses chemical, biophysical and genetic methods to learn how signals from the outside of a cell are relayed across its membrane and into the cell’s interior. Much of their work is focused on elucidating the principles that underlie ligand recognition in GPCRs and understanding with chemical precision how receptors change conformation in the membrane bilayer when ligands bind.
Read more about Prof. Sakmar’s research on the Rockefeller website