Professor Pomerantz receives Kimmel Scholar Award

Professor William “Will” Pomerantz has received a Kimmel Scholar Award from the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research. He will receive a two-year grant totaling $200,000.

The Kimmel Scholar Awards were created to advance the careers of gifted, young scientists involved in cancer research. Those selected are chosen for demonstrating the greatest promise and innovation in their work, and must be in the early stages of their research career.

Pomerantz’ lab was awarded the grant for studying epigenetic regulation in various cancer models by the transcription factor BPTF through small molecule inhibition. The long term goal in this research is to inhibit the function of bromodomains involved in cancer and decipher their molecular mechanisms using synthetic small molecules. Bromodomains are protein domains that bind to acetylated proteins and can regulate transcription via mediating protein-protein interactions on chromatin.

Researchers in the Pomerantz lab have recently disclosed a new small molecule discovery method using Protein-based fluorine NMR, which they call PrOF NMR (Mishra et al ACS Chem. Biol 2014, Gee et al. ACIE, 2015). The Scholar Award will provide support to investigate the biological function of these small molecules. Additional information describing their NMR method can be found on Bruker BioSpins NMR resource site.