MEETUP · SAN FRANCISCO
Bay Area Frontier Research Club #20 | AI X Bio: Turning Biological Systems into New Tools & Therapies (dinner + paper discussion @ Stanford)
Tonight’s two talks begin with understanding biological machinery at the molecular level—and end with finding ways to make that machinery do something new.
- When
- Wed, Sep 2
5:30 PM to 8:30 PM PT - Where
- Stanford, CA
- Host
- The Frontier Syndicate
- Entry
- Free to attend
About this event
Tonight’s two talks begin with understanding biological machinery at the molecular level—and end with finding ways to make that machinery do something new.
Naima Sharaf’s lab studies how lipoproteins enable nutrient acquisition and transport in Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. By understanding how these systems work at molecular resolution, her lab has been able to build with them. LipoCatch uses a lipoprotein scaffold to attach other proteins, while LipoLoad uses one to package molecular cargo.
Jason Sheltzer’s lab explores a very different system: MDR1, the drug-efflux pump that allows cancer cells to eject chemotherapies and contributes to multidrug resistance. Rather than trying to block MDR1, his team exploits its activity. PAC-1 is a clinical-stage small molecule that acts as an iron chelator. MDR1 exports iron-bound PAC-1, progressively depleting intracellular iron and making MDR1-high cancer cells selectively vulnerable. The resistance mechanism becomes the kill mechanism.
Two very different biological systems, built around the same scientific move: understand the machinery precisely enough to point it somewhere new.
Dinner comes first, followed by two concise talks with extended Q&A. The evening concludes with a guided discussion connecting the ideas across both presentations and questions from the room.
The Frontier Research Club is a...
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