Professor Chris Chang

Chris Chang
Department of Chemistry
Princeton University

Transition Metal Signaling, Metalloallostery, and Metalloplasias: Bioinorganic Chemistry Beyond Active Sites 

Metals are key nutrients required across all kingdoms of life, where they are traditionally studied as cofactors in protein active sites. Our laboratory has pioneered new concepts for metals in biology to launch a field of transition metal signaling, where metalloallostery can increase or decrease the activity of a protein by reversible binding to external allosteric sites. Metalloallostery gives rise to metal-mediated cell growth and proliferation processes, which we define as metalloplasias, where copper-dependent cuproplasia and iron-dependent ferroplasia are representative examples. To study metals in their native biological contexts and how they are misregulated in disease, we are developing molecular imaging probes to track dynamic metal pools with spatial and temporal resolution and proteomics probes to characterize metal-dependent targets of cell signaling. This presentation will focus on our latest work in the development of activity-based probes for metals. These reagents enable us to decipher metal-dependent signaling pathways that infuence fundamental behaviors such as eating and sleeping, as well as identify new metal-dependent disease vulnerabilities in cancer, neurodegeneration, and metabolic disorders. 

Chris Chang

Chris Chang is the Edward and Virginia Taylor Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. He completed his B.S. and M.S. at Caltech in 1997, working with Harry Gray, followed by a Fulbright scholar year at the Université Louis Pasteur in 1998 with Jean-Pierre Sauvage. Chris earned his Ph.D. from MIT in 2002 with Dan Nocera and continued his postdoctoral studies at MIT with Steve Lippard. Chris began his independent career at UC Berkeley in 2004 and moved to Princeton in 2024. His laboratory focuses on the study of elements in chemistry and biology, spanning transition metals, reactive oxygen species, and carbon metabolites. The Chang laboratory develops activity-based sensing and proteomics probes to investigate questions in neuroscience, cancer, and metabolic diseases, advancing new concepts that drive biology and medicine such as transition metal signaling, metalloallostery, and metalloplasia. Chris has mentored over 100 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in his laboratory, along with another 90 undergraduates and visiting scholars, with 45 group alumni now leading their own laboratories as independent faculty. 

Host: Professor Rene Boiteau