James A. Wells

In 2005, Wells joined the faculty of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology at UCSF. He founded the Small Molecule Discovery Center and served as Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry for 8 years. His own lab initially focused on the molecular basis of cell death as applied to cancer and inflammation through elaborating native substrates of caspases. His team designed a suite of engineered enzymes for dissecting protease signaling pathways (subtiligase and the SNIPer), E3 ligase substrates (the NEDDylator), a split-Cas9 for temporal editing, and allosteric inhibitors, split-kinases and new phosphospecific antibodies for probing protein phosphorylation pathways. In 2012, Wells founded the Antibiome Center as part of the Recombinant Antibody Network, devoted to generating human recombinant antibodies at a proteome-wide scale using high throughput platforms for antibody phage display. The Wells Lab now investigates how cell surface proteomes change in health and disease by applying mass spectrometry and protein and antibody engineering, to understand and disrupt human-disease-associated signaling processes. Several notable antibody technologies have also been developed including site specific methionine conjugation using redox-activated chemical tagging (ReACT), antibody-based chemically induced dimerizers (AbCID), antibody-Based PROTACs (AbTAC), antibody targeting a proteolytic neoepitope, and cytokine receptor-targeting chimeras (kineTAC).

In 1998, Wells co-founded Sunesis Pharmaceuticals where he was CSO, and president.  At Sunesis, the group developed a novel technology for site-directed fragment-based drug discovery, Tethering, and applied it to cancer and inflammation targets. They were among the first to develop potent small molecules to protein protein interfaces and cryptic allosteric sites considered undruggable. Several of the compounds discovered at Sunesis are now in clinical development. They also discovered the anti-inflammatory drug Lifitegrast, which was subsequently developed by SarCODE and is now sold by Shire for dry eye syndrome.

James Allen Wells (born April 28, 1950) is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received his B.A. degrees in biochemistry and psychology from University of California, Berkeley in 1973 and a PhD in biochemistry from Washington State University with Ralph Yount, PhD in 1979. He completed his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University School of Medicine with George Stark in 1982. He is a pioneer in protein engineering, phage display, fragment-based lead discovery, cellular apoptosis, and the cell surface proteome.