Scientific Advisory Board

John Kuriyan, PhD (SAB Chair)

Professor of Biochemistry, Chemistry, and Cell and Developmental Biology John Kuriyan earned his Ph.D. in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working under the supervision of Gregory A. Petsko and Martin Karplus (Harvard University). After a brief period of postdoctoral training at Harvard with the same advisors, Dr. Kuriyan was appointed as Assistant Professor at The Rockefeller University in 1987 and as Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in 1990. He was promoted to full Professor at The Rockefeller University in 1993. In 2001 Dr. Kuriyan moved to The University of California, Berkeley, where he served as a Distinguished Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry and HHMI Investigator. In January 2023, Dr. Kuriyan became Dean of Basic Sciences at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences, as well as Professor of Biochemistry, Chemistry, and Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University.

Kuriyan’s research concerns the workings of the enzymes and molecular switches that carry out cellular signal transduction and DNA replication. His laboratory determines the three-dimensional structures of proteins, as well as biochemical, biophysical, and cell biological analyses to elucidate how they work. Breakthroughs from his lab have included determining the mechanisms by which several tyrosine kinases, including Src family kinases, the Abl kinase, and the epidermal growth factor receptor, switch on and off. These tyrosine kinases are very important targets of drug development in cancer. Fundamental insights obtained in the Kuriyan lab have been instrumental in understanding how drugs, such as Gleevec (imatinib) and Scemblix (asciminib), both developed by Novartis, are effective in shutting down the leukemia-causing form of the Abl tyrosine kinase. The Kuriyan lab has also provided a fundamental understanding of the structure and regulation of several other signaling proteins, including STATs, the Ras activator SOS, and calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase-II. The group has also made fundamental contributions to understanding the structural basis for high-speed DNA replication.

Kuriyan’s achievements in science have been recognized by several honors. He was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2001, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008, a Foreign Member of The Royal Society of London in 2015, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine in 2018. In 2024 he was elected a fellow of the Academy of the American Association of Cancer Research. He has also received several prizes, including the Stein and Moore Award and the DuPont-Merck Award of the Protein Society, the Merck Award of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Richard Lounsbery Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Kuriyan was a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences from 1989 to 1993.

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