Susan Lindquist, MIT to Keynote Present at 8th Protein Kinases Conference (July 8-9, 2013 in Boston)

Monrovia, CA, May 09, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Susan Lindquist, Professor of Biology and Member of Whitehead Institute at MIT, will give a keynote presentation on “Hsp90 as a Sensor for In Vivo Drug: Target Interactions” at the 8th Protein Kinases in Drug Discovery Conference on July 8-9, 2013 in Boston, MA.

Heat shock proteins (Hsps) function as chaperones to promote the correct folding and maturation of many other proteins in the cell. Hsp90 is an abundant and highly specialized molecular chaperone that plays many important roles in human biology and medicine. While it’s known that Hsp90 works on a particularly interesting group of client proteins comprising metastable signal transducers that are key regulators of a broad spectrum of biological processes, determinants of client recognition by HSP90 have remained frustratingly elusive. Recently, Susan Lindquist’s group developed a specialized assay to address the function of Hsp90 and its client recognition in vivo at the molecular level. Using human cells, they’ve have systematically and quantitatively surveyed most human kinases, transcription factors and ubiquitin ligases for interaction with Hsp90 and its co-chaperone Cdc37. This analysis has clarified the mechanism of Hsp90 client recognition as a two-step process: its co-chaperones provide specificity at the protein-fold level, whereas thermodynamic parameters determine client binding within a protein family.

Susan Lindquist is a world leader in the study of protein folding. Her pioneering work has demonstrated that alternative protein conformations have profound and unexpected effects in fields as wide ranging as human disease, evolution, and biomaterials. Susan Lindquist is a Member and former Director (2001-2004) of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Professor of Biology at MIT. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the American Philosophical Society and the Institute of Medicine. Her honors also include the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the Otto-Warburg Prize, the Genetics Society of America Medal, the FASEB Excellence in Science Award, the Max Delbrück Medal, the Mendel Medal and the E.B. Wilson Medal. In 2009, she was the recipient of the National Medal of Science.

To remain competitive in the kinase field, stay abreast with recent development trends and technological advancements aimed towards challenges which accompany the development of ATP-competitive kinase inhibitors and problems of gatekeeper-associated drug resistance. GTC’s 8th Protein Kinases in Drug Discovery Conference will provide an overview of the preclinical development of kinase inhibitors for cancers and inflammatory diseases. Key highlights include discussions on how phenotypic screening can be used for the identification of novel kinase targets and profiling, challenges and limitations of phenotypic screening, the use of physiologically relevant assays, structure-based drug design and cheminformatics tools, as well as strategies to develop selective inhibitors by targeting target inactive and active (DFG-out/in) kinases.

Speaker List: www.gtcbio.com/proteinkinases/speakers
Agenda: www.gtcbio.com/proteinkinases/agenda
For more information, please visit www.gtcbio.com/proteinkinases