About Us

The goal of our lab is to understand drug action at the cellular level. We focus on a family of proteins called G protein-coupled receptors. Currently, more than one third of all FDA approved drugs target this super-family of proteins. GPCRs reside at the interface of chemistry and biology: detecting small molecules—such as neurotransmitters, hormones, or peptides—and translating that information into a physiological response. We are particularly interested in GPCRs involved in drug abuse and mental health, and we study these proteins with approaches ranging from chemical biology and genomics to in vitro reconstitution and proteomics.