Our lab is interested in healthy aging, focusing on understanding the balance between health, aging, and disease states. Based on those knowledge, we perform protein design and drug discovery to promote healthy aging. To that end, we combine computational (dry lab) and experimental (web lab) methods. 

      1. Polyamines are indispensable natural metabolites for all cells. Using the polyamine metabolic network as a model, we want to understand how protein-protein interaction (PPI) regulates polyamine homeostasis.

      2. We developed the covalent drug discovery protocol SCARdock, the first of its kind for discovering covalent ligands based on non-covalent docking, experimentally validated on both nucleophilic and electrophilic targets. We want to use SCARdock to discover novel covalent ligands targeting undruggable proteins, by acting as inhibitors, molecular glues, or PROTACs.

      3. We are also interested in the design of protein structure, function, affinity, and orthogonality. On one side, we want to design functional proteins such as industrial enzymes. On the other side, we are interested in understanding how PPI could be targeted for functional protein design.