Michelle Arkin is a visionary chemical biologist, Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, at the School of Pharmacy, and Executive Director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC) at UCSF, a center that which works with investigators in academia, biotech, and pharma to develop first-in-class probes and drug leads for novel targets across a broad range of therapeutic areas.

Michelle’s research focuses on developing innovative approaches to screen for chemical tools and drug leads, using biophysical approaches like fragment-based drug discovery and biological approaches including high-content imaging with primary cells and organisms, and developing molecules and methods that target currently ‘undruggable proteins,’ including protein-protein interactions and dynamic or intrinsically disordered proteins, demonstrating ‘druggability’ of new target classes, and using their compounds to discover new targets for drug discovery.

She co-founded Ambagon Therapeutics to develop molecular glues targeting the chaperone 14-3-3 and Elgia Therapeutics to commercialize caspase inhibitors to treat diseases caused by chronic inflammation.

Prior to UCSF, Michelle was Associate Director of Cell Biology at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where she helped discover inhibitors of protein-protein interactions for IL-2/IL-2R and LFA1/ICAM (lifitegrast). She earned her PhD in Chemistry at Caltech and held a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech.