The UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) presents a special seminar at UCSF Mission Bay.

Visiting speaker Ray Deshaies, PhD will present, "Any Target, Every Time: How Multispecifics Drugs Are Transforming Pharmacotherapy."

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About the Speaker

Dr. Deshaies is currently Professor Emeritus in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech. Prior to that he held various positions at Amgen, including senior vice president of discovery research (2017-18), senior vice president of global research (2018-2024), and Distinguished Fellow (January-June 2025). As head of Global Research he led the team responsible for identifying the most innovative technologies,  targets, and therapeutic molecules. Dr. Deshaies joined Amgen after serving as professorial faculty for 23 years at Caltech, the last 17 of which he was also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His lab at Caltech/Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigated the cellular machinery that mediates protein degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS), and how this machinery regulates cell division. During his time at Caltech, he collaborated with Craig Crews (Yale) to conceive of and demonstrate proof-of-concept for targeted protein degradation with proteolysis-targeting chimeric molecules (PROTACs)

During his tenure at Caltech, Dr. Deshaies co-founded Proteolix in 2003 and Cleave Therapeutics in 2011. Proteolix initiated development of Kyprolis®.

Dr. Deshaies received his bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2011, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2016 to the National Academy of Sciences. Drs. Deshaies and Crews have received the Gabbay Prize in biotechnology and have been named laureates of the Passano Foundation for their discovery of PROTACs).