James Chou, HMS associate professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, will receive $13 million over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to establish a center dedicated to revealing the structures of membrane proteins important in biology and medicine.
The award is part of the Protein Structure Initiative (PSI), a National Institutes of Health effort that started in 2000. Chou is one of nine grant recipients studying membrane proteins.
He will use solution nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to elucidate protein structures that have high biological impact. Though membrane proteins represent nearly half of all drug targets, the technical challenge of solving their structure poses a hurdle for drug design.
“The importance of membrane proteins in biology and medicine has been recognized for a long time,” said Ward Smith, PSI director. “This new center led by Dr. Chou at Harvard brings together an international team that will develop key technologies needed to build a robust pipeline for determining the structures of these proteins.”
