HFSP Matters: An HFSP fellowship that sowed the seeds for PROTAC drug development.
by Alessio Ciulli
In 2009, Alessio Ciulli was awarded an HFSP Short-Term Fellowship1 to support his 3-month research visit to Yale University to start a collaboration between his new lab and the lab of Professor Craig Crews at Yale. Crews, Ciulli and co-workers designed potent small molecules targeting the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) E3 ligase, aiding development of much improved proteolysis targeting chimeric molecules (PROTACs). Today, only a few years after the beginning of this crucial collaboration, targeted protein degradation has emerged as a transformative new modality of therapeutic intervention that is making an impact across the pharmaceutical industry. The following article by Alessio Ciulli briefly recounts how HFSP support helped to seed these important advances, and highlights its impact both academically and commercially.
