Description:

Degradation of Undruggable Genes using RNA-targeting Small Molecules

Dr. Jingxin Wang's research group is dedicated to addressing a critical challenge in chemical genetics: the regulation of "undruggable" genes using small molecules. Proper RNA and protein expression in human cells is vital for development, disease, defense, and homeostasis. Over the past few decades, drug development has primarily focused on targeting proteins. However, this strategy addresses only a fraction of the human proteome, leaving many disease-modifying biological processes beyond pharmacological control. Dr. Wang and his team are tackling this problem by shifting their focus from the proteome to the transcriptome—specifically, mRNAs and their precursors—as a new frontier for therapeutic intervention. This seminar will highlight recent advances from Dr. Wang’s lab in developing heterodimeric RNA-targeting agents, including RNA splicing modulators and RNA-degrading chimeras, with applications in neurological diseases and viral infections.

Bio: Jingxin came to the United States for graduate training and completed his Ph.D. degree in chemistry in 2011 at the University of Maryland, under the guidance of Herman Sintim. In the Sintim lab, he was trained to synthesize novel molecules to combat bacterial antibiotic resistance. After graduation, he joined Jun Liu’s lab at Johns Hopkins University as a postdoc and conducted research on a novel drug modality called "rapafucin" to induce protein-protein interactions.

In 2014, he started further chemical biology training in Peter Schultz's lab (co-advised by Kristen Johnson) at the Scripps Research Institute, where he is performing high-throughput screening, assay development, and target validation for novel viral and cancer immunotherapy, as well as mechanistic studies for molecules that modulate RNA splicing. He joined the University of Kansas in 2019 as a tenure-track Assistant Professor, and moved to the University of Chicago in 2024. His current research focuses on regulating RNA degradation and splicing in cells by small- and macro-molecules.