Michelle R. Arkin is an American chemical biologist who is the Thomas William and Frederick John MacWilliam Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Education

Arkin obtained her B.A. degree in chemistry from

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh language, Welsh: ) is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a ...

and her Ph.D. in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology with Jacqueline Barton. Later, Arkin held a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellowship at

Genentech Genentech, Inc. is an American biotechnology corporation headquartered in South San Francisco, California. It operates as an independent subsidiary of holding company Roche. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent cent ...

under the mentorship of James A. Wells.

Career

Arkin was a founding scientist at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where she helped discover and develop the anti-inflammatory drug lifitigrast (developed by SARcode/Shire), and anti-cancer experimental therapeutic vosaroxin (Sunesis). Arkin is the Thomas William and Frederick John MacWilliam Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Her lab at UCSF focuses on developing methodologies and functional molecules that target undruggable proteins, including challenging targets in diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. Her lab also studies the chemical biology of protein-protein interaction networks. Arkin was appointed as the Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF in early 2021. Arkin is the Director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC) at UCSF, a center that collaborates with academics, pharmaceutical companies, and government labs to develop drug leads and chemical probes that address unmet medical needs. Arkin is an investigator in the UCSF Cancer Center, the Bakar Aging Research Institute, and the Rainwater Foundation's Tau Consortium. Arkin is a recipient of the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and the Gordon Hammes Lectureship Award in 2024. She is also an adjunct professor at the Buck Institute for Research in Aging. She is involved with the academic drug discovery community, as Director and former President of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, editor of the National Institutes of Health Assay Guidance Manual, and Fellow and former Director of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening. Arkin is a cofounder and Director of Ambagon Therapeutics and cofounder of Elgia Therapeutics.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American women biochemists {{Improve categories, date=December 2023