Professor Pomerantz awarded $1.9M NIH MIRA grant

Associate Professor William CK Pomerantz has been awarded a $1.9 million dollar grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH,  “Chemical Probe Development for Epigenetic Complexes Enabled by Protein-Observed 19 F NMR.”

This R35 Maximizing Investigator' Research Award (MIRA) will support the Pomerantz lab’s ongoing research efforts developing inhibitors of transcription factor-protein interactions. While Inhibiting transcription factor function mediated by epigenetic proteins is a powerful but challenging approach for controlling disease, the Pomerantz group's 19 F NMR approach is being used as a small molecule discovery method, which has recently borne out in the development of highly potent inhibitors for epigenetic proteins BRD4 and BPTF.

Inhibitors from these studies are being shared with the research community for deciphering the molecular mechanisms associated with epigenetic regulation of gene transcription by these proteins, and are actively being developed as epigenetic therapeutic agents.