Ray Deshaies, Amgen’s senior vice president of Global Research, and Yale University professor, Craig Crews, have received the Jacob and Louise Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine for their pioneering work on PROTACs, or proteolysis targeting chimeras. This promising multispecific drug modality targets proteins of interest for degradation and is a big focus of Amgen’s Induced Proximity Platform (IPP).
The two met in 1998, when Deshaies was at the California Institute of Technology. They were both attending a Burroughs Wellcome Fund retreat for recipients of new investigator awards in the basic pharmacological sciences. It was at that meeting they hatched the idea for PROTACs, which has since opened the potential to develop innovative therapies for cancer, autoimmune conditions and more.
The annual award, administered by Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, is presented to scientists whose work exhibits outstanding scientific content and significant practical applications in the biomedical sciences.
Deshaies and Crews will visit the Brandeis campus on October 25th to formally accept the award and deliver a lecture.
