Professor Fleur Ferguson

Title: Interrogating the Druggable Proteome with Proximity Pharmacology

Biography:

Fleur Ferguson received her M.Sc degree in Chemistry from Imperial College London, where she received the Department of Chemistry prize for overall excellence. Dr. Ferguson received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge funded by a BBSRC studentship, advised by Prof. Chris Abell and Prof. Alessio Ciulli. She then performed her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. Nathanael Gray at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Ferguson’s academic research group at UCSD focuses on the development of proximity-pharmacology tools, technologies and therapeutics, with a focus on to disease areas where traditional targeted therapies have failed, such as neurological and degenerative diseases. To translate these discoveries to patients, Dr. Ferguson co-founded a biotechnology company, and her lab collaborates with physicians, pharmacists and industry scientists. Research in the Ferguson lab has been recognized by numerous prestigious awards including the NIH Directors’ New Innovator Award, the NSF CAREER, the Keck Foundation Research Award, Pew Biomedical Scholars Award, and new investigator awards from the Alzheimer’s Association, the PhRMA Foundation, the Hilblom Foundation.