Welcome to Biomed Bites, a weekly feature that introduces readers to some of Stanford’s most innovative researchers.
Pehr Harbury, PhD, has made a career out of solving biochemical puzzles. An associate professor of biochemistry, Harbury and his team are juggling quite a few challenges, including an effort to assemble a library of small molecules. Here's Harbury in the video above:
One central area has been to develop techniques to perform the directed evolution of small molecules in much the same way that nature has produced the vast collection of natural products that are central to medicine.
Team members then examine the molecules to search for ones that interact with natural compounds, potentially conferring beneficial properties.
Harbury is also working to understand the shapes that proteins make when they're in solution – "a problem that remains largely unsolved." He describes several other projects - some which he said could lead to an earlier diagnosis for pulmonary hypertension or cancer - in the video above.
Learn more about Stanford Medicine’s Biomedical Innovation Initiative and about other faculty leaders who are driving biomedical innovation here.
Previously: Getting a glimpse of the shape molecules actually take in the cell, New painkiller could tackle pain, without risk of addiction and Another piece of the pulmonary-hypertension puzzle gets plugged into place
