Targeted kinase inhibitors (TKI) are among the most successful targeted cancer therapies. However, TKIs simultaneously inhibit several human protein kinases, often causing undesirable off-target toxicity. Together with his research group at Berlin Institute of Health, the renowned chemist and biophysicist John Chodera works on increasing the effectiveness of TKIs, making an important contribution to the treatment of cancer. His research group sits at the intersection of two labs, combining expert structured machine learning techniques developed in Volkamer's lab with advanced free energy calculation methods from the Chodera lab.
Chodera, who has previously worked at University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, is now an Associate Professor for Physiology, Biophysics and Systems Biology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.