K. Christopher Garcia

Dr. K. Christopher Garcia is a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and Structural Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine. His lab studies the structural, mechanistic and functional aspects of receptor-ligand interactions that play important roles in mammalian biology and human disease, principally pertaining to signaling in immunology, stem cells and neurobiology. Dr. Garcia combines structural approaches with ligand engineering in an effort to manipulate signaling pathways to control cell function. Notably, structural studies in Dr. Garcia’s lab provided a snapshot of how Wnt proteins bind to the Frizzled family of receptors, giving important insights into potential approaches to regulate Wnt signaling in a therapeutic setting. Dr. Garcia joined the Stanford faculty in 1999 after completing postdoctoral fellowships at Genentech and the Scripps Research Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a B.S. in Biochemistry from Tulane University. Dr. Garcia is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2005. He has received numerous awards including the Distinguished Young Scholar in Medical Research by the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Pew Scholarship in the Biomedical Sciences, the Rita Allen Foundation Scholarship, the Fields Endowed Lecture by the Scripps Research Institute and the Weiser Endowed Lecture by the University of Washington.