Bruce Posner, Ph.D. Professor School Medical School Department Biochemistry Graduate Programs Biological Chemistry Biography I attended the University of Chicago for undergraduate school and graduated with honors in chemistry under the direction of Professor N.C. Yang. I went on to complete my graduate studies in biological chemistry under the direction of Professor Stephen Benkovic at Penn State, where I studied structure-function relationships in dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) using site-directed mutagenesis and enzyme kinetics (steady state and pre-steady state). I also worked on screening methods for catalytic antibodies in bacteria. After my graduate studies, I did a NIH-sponsored post-doctoral fellowship with Professor Alfred Gilman at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where I characterized mutant and wild-type G-proteins using x-ray crystallography, kinetics, and signal transduction methods. I also worked on the first published crystal structures for the bg heterodimer and the G-protein heterotrimer as a collaborative effort with Stephen Sprang’s lab. I joined Pfizer in 1999 as a senior research scientist, where I focused on high throughput screening and pre-clinical drug discovery. I was later promoted to senior principal scientist. During my tenure at Pfizer, I led over 60 HTS campaigns and contributed to the identification of over 20 leads, two candidate compounds that reached clinical trials, and two approved drugs (Xeljanz & Geodon). In 2009, I returned to UT Southwestern as an Associate Professor in the Biochemistry Department and the Director of the High Throughput Screening Core Facility. My group is focused on the discovery and the early stage, pre-clinical development of new small molecule therapeutics and supporting the identification and characterization of novel biological targets and pathways for therapeutic intervention in a variety of diseases. In this regard, we work closely with principal investigators at UT Southwestern on turning new insights in biology and the pathology of disease into pre-clinical drug and target discovery programs. HTS Core Website: https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/labs/hts/ Education Undergraduate University of Chicago (1987), Chemistry Graduate School Pennsylvania State University (1994), Chemistry Research Interest bioinformatics cheminformatics data analysis and management High Throughput Screening pre-clinical drug discovery Publications Featured Publications Tumor-Activated Benzothiazole Inhibitors of Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase. Williams NS, Gonzales S, Naidoo J, Rivera-Cancel G, Voruganti S, Mallipeddi P, Theodoropoulos PC, Geboers S, Chen H, Ortiz F, Posner B, Nijhawan D, Ready JM, J. Med. Chem. 2020 Aug Single-cell-level screening method for migratory cancer cells and its potential feasibility in high-throughput manner. Shen Q, Niederstrasser H, Barakat R, Haddadin Z, Miller SR, Posner B, Kim YT, Biofabrication 2020 06 12 3 035019 Chemical intervention of influenza virus mRNA nuclear export. Esparza M, Mor A, Niederstrasser H, White K, White A, Zhang K, Gao S, Wang J, Liang J, Sho S, Sakthivel R, Sathe AA, Xing C, Muñoz-Moreno R, Shay JW, García-Sastre A, Ready J, Posner B, Fontoura BMA, PLoS Pathog. 2020 Apr 16 4 e1008407 Simultaneous Control of Endogenous and User-Defined Genetic Pathways Using Unique ecDHFR Pharmacological Chaperones. Ramadurgum P, Woodard DR, Daniel S, Peng H, Mallipeddi PL, Niederstrasser H, Mihelakis M, Chau VQ, Douglas PM, Posner BA, Hulleman JD, Cell Chem Biol 2020 Mar Discovery of Cytochrome P450 4F11 Activated Inhibitors of Stearoyl Coenzyme A Desaturase. Winterton SE, Capota E, Wang X, Chen H, Mallipeddi PL, Williams NS, Posner BA, Nijhawan D, Ready JM J. Med. Chem. 2018 Jun 61 12 5199-5221 High-Throughput Screens To Identify Autophagy Inducers That Function by Disrupting Beclin 1/Bcl-2 Binding. Chiang WC, Wei Y, Kuo YC, Wei S, Zhou A, Zou Z, Yehl J, Ranaghan MJ, Skepner A, Bittker JA, Perez JR, Posner BA, Levine B ACS Chem. Biol. 2018 Jun Chemistry-First Approach for Nomination of Personalized Treatment in Lung Cancer. McMillan EA, Ryu MJ, Diep CH, Mendiratta S, Clemenceau JR, Vaden RM, Kim JH, Motoyaji T, Covington KR, Peyton M, Huffman K, Wu X, Girard L, Sung Y, Chen PH, Mallipeddi PL, Lee JY, Hanson J, Voruganti S, Yu Y, Park S, Sudderth J, DeSevo C, Muzny DM, Doddapaneni H, Gazdar A, Gibbs RA, Hwang TH, Heymach JV, Wistuba I, Coombes KR, Williams NS, Wheeler DA, MacMillan JB, Deberardinis RJ, Roth MG, Posner BA, Minna JD, Kim HS, White MA Cell 2018 Apr ZNF281 enhances cardiac reprogramming by modulating cardiac and inflammatory gene expression. Zhou H, Morales MG, Hashimoto H, Dickson ME, Song K, Ye W, Kim MS, Niederstrasser H, Wang Z, Chen B, Posner BA, Bassel-Duby R, Olson EN Genes Dev. 2017 Sep 31 17 1770-1783 Identification of Trypanosoma brucei AdoMetDC inhibitors using a high-throughput mass spectrometry-based assay. Volkov OA, Cosner CC, Brockway AJ, Kramer M, Booker M, Zhong S, Ketcherside A, Wei S, Longgood J, McCoy MK, Richardson TE, Wring SA, Peel M, Klinger JD, Posner BA, De Brabander JK, Phillips MA ACS Infect Dis 2017 Mar SMARCA4-inactivating mutations increase sensitivity to Aurora kinase A inhibitor VX-680 in non-small cell lung cancers. Tagal V, Wei S, Zhang W, Brekken RA, Posner BA, Peyton M, Girard L, Hwang T, Wheeler DA, Minna JD, White MA, Gazdar AF, Roth MG Nat Commun 2017 Jan 8 14098 Results 1-10 of 60 1 2 3 4 5 Next Last Honors & Awards Pfizer Discovery Recognition Award (2004) Homer C. Braddock Graduate Fellowship (1998) NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship (1995) Paul Berg Award in Molecular Biology (1990) Pela Fay Braucher Graduate Fellowship (1987)
