Steven Fletcher, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
University of Maryland School of Pharmacy
20 N Pine St, Room N717
Baltimore, MD 21201
410.706.6361 – phone
410.706.5017 – fax
sfletcher@rx.umaryland.edu
Research Overview
My research lab is interested in the rational design of drugs towards new treatments for cancer and inflammation. In addition to the discovery of traditional small-molecules, my research also includes harnessing covalent chemistries to accomplish sustained inhibitions of target proteins, as well as leveraging proteolysis-targeting chimera and molecular glue technologies to achieve the targeted degradation of disease-causing proteins.
Brief Biosketch
I conducted my second post-doctoral position at the University of Toronto, where I worked with Patrick T. Gunning primarily on the synthesis of small-molecule inhibitors of the oncogenic Stat3-Stat3 protein dimer complex. My first post-doctoral position was carried out in the labs of Andrew D. Hamilton at Yale University on the design and synthesis of farnesyltransferase (FTase) inhibitors as novel antimalarial and anticancer agents. A particular highlight of this work was the solution of several crystal structures of our inhibitors inside the enzyme active site, which helped explain the relative selectivities across the two FTase isoforms. Before moving to Yale, I achieved my Ph.D. in Organic / Medicinal Chemistry at Imperial College London (UK) with Andrew. D Miller, where I was involved in the design and synthesis of temperature- and pH-triggerable lipids for incorporation into liposomes for non-viral gene therapy. Prior to Imperial, I obtained my BA / MNatSci degree from the University of Cambridge (UK). My undergraduate research project at Cambridge was the synthesis of dendrimers for use in a dynamic combinatorial library.