In this episode of The Chain, host Brandon DeKosky, associate professor at MIT, speaks with Andrew Kruse, PhD, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard University, about protein signaling and structural biology. Kruse explains what exactly bias signaling is and discusses the problems he and his team are working to resolve, as well as the tools they use to work out the dynamics of structures. He also shares the findings in signaling receptors and biology that he’s most excited about, recent advancements that have caught his attention, and the new directions for him and his lab.
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Andrew C. Kruse, PhD, professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Kruse is a professor at Harvard Medical School, where he leads a group focused on the structure and function of integral membrane receptors. Key research accomplishments include defining the structural basis for agonist action at the angiotensin II type 1 receptor and other G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), cloning the sigma-2 receptor, and determining the first structure of a tetraspanin protein and showing how it regulates B cell activation. The Kruse lab developed a single-domain antibody fragment discovery platform that has now been distributed to more than 400 academic labs and has been licensed to several pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Kruse is a co-founder of Tectonic Therapeutic, a biotechnology company, and the Institute for Protein Innovation, a non-profit research organization. He has received awards including an Amgen Young Investigator Award (2019), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2017), a Vallee Scholars Award (2016), and an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (2015). He received B.S. degrees in Mathematics and Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota in 2009 and completed a Ph.D. in Structural Biology at Stanford University in 2014, where he trained with Dr. Brian Kobilka.
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Brandon DeKosky, associate professor, MIT
Brandon J. DeKosky joined the Department of Chemical Engineering as an assistant professor in a newly introduced joint faculty position between the department and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in September 2021. He received his BS in chemical engineering from University of Kansas, and his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He then did postdoctoral research at the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. In 2017, Brandon launched his independent academic career as an assistant professor at the University of Kansas in a joint position with the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. He was also a member of the bioengineering graduate program. His research program focuses on developing and applying a suite of new high-throughput experimental and computational platforms for molecular analysis of adaptive immune responses, and to accelerate precision drug discovery. He has received several notable recognitions, which include receipt of the NIH K99 Path to Independence and NIH DP5 Early Independence Award, the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the Career Development Award from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program’s Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program.