Jing An
University of California-San Diego, CA·Pharmacology
Chemokines are small signaling proteins that tell cells where to move in the body. They do this by binding receptors on the cell surface.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Biochemistry
Chemistry
- Topics
chemokines
chemokine receptors
G protein-coupled receptors
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Develop CXCR4-targeted stem cell mobilizers, molecules that draw stem cells toward a site, with optimized pharmacological and biological properties, building on small molecule-peptide conjugate agonists with higher receptor affinity and lower synthetic cost.
- Probe the structure-function relationship of CXCR4-ligand binding and signaling, building on point-mutation mapping of 24 residues across the receptor's seven transmembrane domains.
- Advance designed CXCR4 agonists as drug leads that guide human neural stem cell migration for stem cell-based tissue repair, building on prior therapeutic effects in mice with neurodegenerative disease.
More about the research
One of these receptors, CXCR4, guides the movement of stem cells. Learning how molecules bind and switch on CXCR4 could help turn stem cell movement into a tool for repairing damaged tissue. This long-running project studies how chemokines and their receptors work in disease and uses that knowledge to design new treatments.
Why it matters
Stem cell-based tissue repair needs ways to steer stem cells to where they are needed. Improved CXCR4-activating molecules could become drug leads for regenerative medicine, including approaches tested here in mice with neurodegenerative disease. Smaller, cheaper conjugate molecules may also make such treatments more practical to develop.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sojin Shikano
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
Characterize how strongly the TM4 peptide, a nanoparticle-forming copy of GPR15's fourth membrane-spanning segment, blocks GPR15L-triggered signaling through the GPR15 receptor in cell-based assays.
Jiashu Xie
University of Minnesota, MN·Pharmacology
Screen an in-house library of about 30 deazaflavin analogs for inhibition of the MRP1 drug efflux pump using membrane vesicle transport assays and a cell-based calcein retention assay, and define potency and structure-activity relationships.
Lan Zhu
Medical College of Wisconsin, WI·Biophysics
Determine the structures of non-Class B GPCRs bound to receptor activity-modifying proteins (RAMPs) using cryo-EM, crystallography, and molecular dynamics, to learn how RAMPs control surface localization and ligand recognition.
The school
University of California-San Diego: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 637 research doctorates a year.
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