Charles S. Craik

Charles S. Craik is a Professor at UCSF in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and co-director of the Experimental Therapeutics program in the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also the founder and co-director of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Graduate Program. His research interests focus on defining the roles and the mechanisms of enzymes and other challenging proteins in complex biological processes and on developing technologies to facilitate these studies. Current research in the Craik lab is on the chemical biology of post translational modifying enzymes, receptors and membrane transporters. A particular emphasis of his work is on identifying the roles and regulating the activity of proteases and degradative enzyme complexes associated with infectious diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. He is also developing novel methods to biophysically characterize challenging proteins as well as their complexes. These studies coupled with his global substrate profiling, antibody engineering and noninvasive imaging efforts are providing a better understanding of both the chemical make-up and the biological importance of these critical proteins to aid in the rapid detection, monitoring and control of disease. Craik a founder of Catalyst Biosciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the 2016 awardee of the Emil Kaiser Award by the Protein Society.