Fleur M. Ferguson, Ph.D.

Research

My research will develop strategies for engineering non-degrader “molecular glues” that can hold together or functionally redirect the activity of specific protein complexes. Although proteins are the functional workhorses of the cell, they don’t act in isolation. Many bind to other proteins to form large functional complexes—the assembly of which can be facilitated by small molecules that act as molecular glues. My lab recently developed a method to identify and catalog the protein complexes to which glue molecules bind in living cells. Now, combining this method with cutting-edge techniques in computational and structural biology and medicinal chemistry, we will characterize the interactomes of a series of synthetic molecular glues, assess their affinity for hub proteins that naturally engage with multiple partners, and design new glues that are able to reconfigure cell signaling pathways dysregulated in disease. Our work could lead to novel strategies for targeting pathways involved in a variety of diseases, including cancers as well as neurodegenerative and developmental disorders.