4th Transatlantic ECI GPCR Symposium

Context-dependent GPCR signalling through the lens of Computational Biology

Maria obtained her PhD in Biomedicine at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona under the joint supervision of Dr. Manuel Pastor and Dr. Jana Selent, in which she applied advanced computational structural biology techniques to study biased agonism in GPCRs implicated in antipsychotic treatment. She later joined the group of Prof. Peter Kolb at the Philipps University Marburg, where she employed chemoinformatics and virtual screening methods to search for conformation-specific receptor modulators. In 2018, she joined Dr. Madan Babu’s lab in the Structural Studies Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. There, she worked on a systems pharmacology project addressing signaling variability arising from tissue-specific receptor isoform expression, with the support of postdoctoral fellowships from the Federation of Biochemical Societies (Long-Term Fellowship) and the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship). Dr. Marti Solano became a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a group leader at the Department of Pharmacology in October 2022.

Uncovering how unconventional stimuli activate GPCRs

Aashish was an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, where he worked in the lab of Jeff McKinney on Salmonella-host interactions. He moved to California in 2008 to join the Stanford Medical Scientist Training Program. There, he worked with Brian Kobilka as a graduate student to elucidate different aspects of GPCR function, resulting in a number of important contributions to our current understanding of opioid and adrenergic receptors. After finishing his medical training in May 2016, Aashish began his independent research career as the first Stanford Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine within the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and started at UCSF in 2017.

Roshanak is a Principal Investigator at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics at the University of California San Francisco. Her lab focuses on understanding how intracellular compartments, like endosomes and the Golgi, influence GPCR signaling. They use novel biosensors, sophisticated microscopy, cell biology, pharmacology, and, ultimately, physiology to study compartmentalized signaling.

Reid is a Director of Cellular Pharmacology & head of GPCR Pharmacology at Exscentia, Technology-driven AI Drug Discovery. He joined Exscentia after a PhD with Bryan Roth at the University of North Carolina, during which he created TRUPATH, an open-source biosensor platform for interpreting the GPCR transducerome.

Andrew is the Director of the Center for Chemical Genomics at the University of Michigan, where he runs a research resource for high throughput screening and assay development. Prior to joining the University of Michigan he has worked as a researcher at multiple pharmaceutical companies including Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Epix Pharmaceuticals, and Arvinas.

Matthew is an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His lab specializes in exploring how protein phosphorylation of intrinsically disordered protein structures regulates signaling pathways mediated by heterotrimeric G proteins. To investigate the impact of phosphorylated G proteins on GPCR signaling, his team employs a multidisciplinary approach that combines mass spectrometry-based proteomics with machine learning, bioinformatics, structural and cellular biology.

Katarzyna began her studies at King’s College London, where she worked in James Mason’s lab, applying biophysical techniques to investigate interactions of antimicrobial peptides with biological membranes. She carried out her doctoral work in the group of John Briggs at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, working on the structures of vesicular protein coats and viral glycoproteins using cryo-EM and cryo-ET. She joined Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, London office in 2022.