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Current Lab Members

	Paul Thompson, PhD Principal Investigator Professor and Director of Chemical Biology LRB 825 Tel: 508-856-8492 Dr. Paul Thompson received his BSc and PhD degrees from McMaster University in Canada before moving to the US to take a postdoctoral position with Philip Cole at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Paul then moved to the University of South Carolina to begin his independent career before moving to the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute, Scripps Florida, in May 2010. Paul subsequently moved to UMASS Med in Aug 2014. Paul has published more than 152 articles in major scientific journals including Nature, Cell, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Paul has also won a number of awards including a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
	Janneke Doedee Graduate Student LRB 860C Janneke’s research is focused on characterizing the molecular mechanisms of Tir1, the worm ortholog of SARM1. Like SARM1, Tir1 is a NAD glycohydrolase that plays an important role in neuronal cell death. These studies will aid our efforts to develop inhibitors targeting the human enzyme and thereby provide therapies for a broad range of diseases including traumatic brain injury and peripheral neuropathies.
	Heather Loring Graduate Student LRB 860C Heather’s research is focused on characterizing the enzymatic mechanism and structure of SARM1, a novel NAD glycohydrolase that plays an important role in neuronal cell death and peripheral neuropathy. The development of inhibitors targeting this enzyme will provide therapeutic benefit for a range of diseases. In 2018 Heather was awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual Predoctoral Fellow (F31). And her doctoral research is supposed by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the NIH.
	Santanu Mondal, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C Santanu is currently working on the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of inhibitors targeting the PAD family of enzymes. His work also focuses on the development of isozyme-selective inhibitors and probes for the PADs.
	Sangram Parelkar, PhD Manager of Research Operations for Small Molecule Screening Facility LRB 860D Using High Throughput and High Content based biochemical and cellular approaches, Sangram is working towards discovering novel small molecule therapeutic candidates for various biological processes. More info about SMSF: http://www.umassmed.edu/smsf/
	Archie Reyes, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860D Archie is currently focused on developing probes to identify and characterize citrulline specific proteases. He is also discovering the factors that regulate the activity of the protein arginine deiminases.
	Ari Salinger, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C Ari is currently focused on using chemoproteomic methods to identify citrullinated proteins and disease associated biomarkers. This work is being performed jointly with the Weerapana group at Boston College. In 2018 Ari has been awarded a Ruth L. Kirschtein fellowship by the NIH and the award was given to Ari for his proposal to develop enhanced methods for identifying the sites of citrullnation in proteins.
	Sudeshna Sen, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C Sudeshna’s current research is focused on characterizing the catalytic mechanism and developing activity based probes forNNMT, a nicotinamide methyltransferase whose activity is aberrantly upregulated in cancer and other diseases. Inhibitors targeting NNMT represent promising anti-cancer therapeutics.
	Ronak Tilvawala, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C Ronak is currently focused on identifying citrullinated biomarkers associated with Rheumatoid Arthritis and breast cancer. In addition, Ronak is studying the functional impact of these citrullination events on protein function, enzymatic activity and the generation of antibodies targeting citrullinated proteins.