Read this in a paper and it was totally new to me (after 18 years in biochemistry research): “Peptides translated from the sense and antisense strands of DNA interact specifically, analogous to the complementary interactions between DNA double strands.” Is this widely studied/actually true?? 🤯

Faculty opening in Cornell Chemistry at the Assistant Professor level in the area of chemical biology, broadly defined! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30338 #chemjobs

Last day at #ENDO2025 was great! Amazing symposium on bone and calcium disorders 🦴 by @rche54.bsky.social @MichailLionakis @MichaelMannstadt with great talks on GPCRs and nanobodies, JAK inhibitors in APECED syndrome & new PTH therapies 🤩

This Wednesday and Thursday is the VIRTUAL Nebraska Drug Discovery and Development Pipeline Symposium! Registration is still open! Plenary speakers include Brian Kobilka and Virginia Man-Yee Lee.

#chemsky, you should attend!

research.unl.edu/blog/annual-...

Check out the final published product in Journal of Biological Chemistry! www.jbc.org/article/S002...

Excited to see this out in @science.org today!! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Next up, a collaboration with Ross Cheloha's group (@rche54 <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ycxfqyv32syaeu347y4xquiw" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@rche54.bsky.social) and @MitchellHo leveraging a novel self-labeling approach for site-specific modification of nanobodies for biological applications.

doi.org/10.1002/advs...
3/5

It's been a while since I posted on some of the ☢️ #radiopharmaceuticals ☢️ work we've been brewing.

Let's fix that...

🧵👇
1/5

Great news: NIH postbac program is recruiting again! If your grad school plans were affected by program cutbacks or admissions freezes this year I highly encourage you to apply, this could be a perfect opportunity. Please repost.

www.training.nih.gov/research-tra...

Check out our new review on induced proximity modalities (#TPD and a lot more!) aimed cell surface targets @naturebiotech.bsky.social, spearheaded by postdocs Nick Till and "Rahm" Ramanathan

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The findings suggest that optimizing input parameters and refining competition-based modeling approaches may enhance predictive accuracy for antibody-antigen interactions. Intriguing.

🧪 #chembio

Finally we compared models of nanobody-epitope to nanobody-antigen complexes. In one case Alphafold produced an accurate model with epitope but failed with antigen! This highlights the potential utility of simplifying Alphafold inputs for generating models with improved accuracies (4/4)

We further showed that Alphafold could be used in a competition mode to identify peptides that bound nanobody with higher affinity than the wild type epitope peptide. We also used modeling to guide design of a peptide-electrophile conjugate that forms a crosslink with nanobody (3/n)

We performed modeling of experimentally characterized nanobody-peptide interactions and found that 4/6 models matched experimental data. We also crystallized a new nanobody-peptide complex and showed good concordance between the x-ray structure (my first listing on the pdb!) (2/n)

Excited to share a preprint covering a collaborative project from my group, the Bewley lab (NIDDK), and the Pierce lab (University of Maryland) describing our first foray into assessing Alphafold for predicting peptide-nanobody interactions (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We’re excited to apply this for cell-type specific targeting of gpcrs! Congrats to postdocs Shivani Sachdev and Swarnali Roy on the great work (3/3)

We also show that the activity of these conjugates is dependent on nanobody binding. This property allows us to make conjugates that act in an “and” logic gated manner-only active if 2 different targets are coexpressed on on a single cell. (2/n)

Proud to share this work from my group in the intramural research program at NIH! We describe a new kind of conjugate made from a small molecule adenosine analog linked to a GPCR targeting nanobody to make antibody drug conjugates that potently and specifically activate signaling (1/n) 🧪 #chembio

Nanobody-based conjugates targeting small molecule-binding GPCRs and exhibiting logic-gated signaling https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.07.642093v1

One good thing I saw today

This work was made possible through contributions from experts in multiple fields (chemistry, cancer imaging, antibody discovery) working together! The methods described may be useful for the development of imaging probes to provide diagnostic info on other types of tumors or other diseases (3/3)

The ability to visualize tumors enables an assessment of whether treatments are working or whether cancer has spread. This imaging requires probes that specifically label cancer cells. We developed a new chemistry for creating probes that label liver cancer tumors. (2/n)

Proud to share this publication about the development of a new method for visualizing tumors! This work resulted from a close collaboration among 3 groups. (1/n) 🧪@freddyeescorcia.bsky.social
advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

I'm actually related to him (second cousins or so)! Can definitely ID the 90's Huskers fans by their reaction when I share this connection