Herschel Mukherjee

Herschel Mukherjee has worked in the pharmaceutical industry since 2007. From 2007 to 2008, they were an Intern at Pfizer in Clinical Research and Development, exploring the scope of a key enzymatic reaction as part of an expedient synthesis of beta-substituted-gamma-amino acids. During this time, they were also an Intern at Amgen in Chemical Process Research and Development, optimizing and exploring the scope of an enantioselective zinc-mediated conjugate alkynylation reaction. From 2008 to 2009, they were a Graduate Student at Harvard University in Organic Chemistry/Chemical Biology, synthesizing the natural product (+)-avrainvillamide and avrainvillamide analogs in amounts sufficient for biological evaluation. From 2009 to 2015, they were a Postdoctoral Researcher at AstraZeneca, characterizing the intrinsic reactivity of covalent drug "warheads" towards specific amino acids and designing, synthesizing, and evaluating the biology of the first covalent Bcl-xL inhibitors. Since 2017, they have been at Arrakis Therapeutics, first as a Scientist, then Scientist 2, and currently as Associate Director and Senior Scientist. In this role, they have designed and synthesized probes to enable the development of novel platforms for assessing the activity of RNA-binding small molecules (RSMs), and serves as the chemistry lead for all target engagement activities. Herschel is also engaged in the design and synthesis of RSMs in support of hit-to-lead programs against multiple RNA targets.

Herschel Mukherjee obtained a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Chemistry from Caltech in 2009, and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Organic Chemistry from Harvard University in 2015.