Cheryl Hillock Arrowsmith (born 1959) is an American-Canadian structural biologist. She is the Chief Scientist at the Toronto laboratory of the

Structural Genomics Consortium The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a public-private-partnership focusing on elucidating the functions and disease relevance of all proteins encoded by the human genome, with an emphasis on those that are relatively understudied. The SGC pl ...

. Her contributions to protein structural biology includes the use of

NMR Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which atomic nucleus, nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are disturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near and far field, near field) and respond by producing ...

and

X-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science of determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to Diffraction, diffract in specific directions. By measuring th ...

to pursue structures of proteins on a proteome wide scale.

Early life and education

Arrowsmith was born in 1959 in

Hackensack, New Jersey Hackensack is the most populous municipality in and the county seat of Bergen County, New Jersey, Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.

. She completed her

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree at

Allegheny College Allegheny College is a private liberal arts college in Meadville, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1815, Allegheny is the oldest college in continuous existence under the same name west of the Allegheny Mountains. It is a member of the G ...

and her PhD in chemistry at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

in 1987. While completing her PhD, Arrowsmith became interested in tumour suppressor

p53 p53, also known as tumor protein p53, cellular tumor antigen p53 (UniProt name), or transformation-related protein 53 (TRP53) is a regulatory transcription factor protein that is often mutated in human cancers. The p53 proteins (originally thou ...

and related proteins after taking a course in

nuclear magnetic resonance Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are disturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...

(NMR). This motivated her to complete her postdoctoral studies at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

with Oleg Jardetzky in his Magnetic Resonance Lab.

Career

Her current research is to determine the 3-dimensional structures of human proteins of therapeutic relevance by structural proteomics. She has made significant contributions to

epigenetic In biology, epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that happen without changes to the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix ''epi-'' (ἐπι- "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are "on top of" or "in ...

signaling in the context of drug discovery. Arrowsmith was named a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

(AAAS) in 2015. She was also named as one of the

Clarivate Clarivate Plc is a British-American Public company, publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription business model, subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business intelligenc ...

Highly Cited Researchers in 2023. In 2020, she was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; , SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguishe ...

References

Living people 1959 births People from Hackensack, New Jersey University of Toronto alumni Allegheny College alumni Canadian company founders Canadian technology company founders Canadian women company founders Structural biologists Canadian geneticists Canadian biochemists Women biochemists Canadian women geneticists Canadian women biologists Canadian women chemists 21st-century Canadian women scientists 21st-century Canadian biologists 21st-century Canadian chemists Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Canada Research Chairs {{Canada-scientist-stub