Jeffery W. Kelly

Jeffery W. Kelly (1960-) is the Dean of Graduate and Post-graduate Studies and the Lita Annenberg Professor of Chemistry within the Skaggs Institute of Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in LaJolla CA. Kelly has started two successful biotechnology companies, FoldRx Pharmaceuticals and Proteostasis Therapeutics, Inc. that are developing first in class drugs for the amelioration of diseases associated with protein misfolding and aggregation. He has trained over 100 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows and serves on the boards of both private companies and not for profits. Kelly received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1986) and performed post-doctoral research at The Rockefeller University. His research focuses on the chemistry and biology of protein homeostasis and the influence of biologicals and small molecules on this network in vivo. Besides studying the structural and energetic basis behind protein folding, his laboratory also studies the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s Diseases, Parkinson’s Disease, and the familial gelsolin and transthyretin-based amyloidoses–publishing over 200 peer-reviewed papers in this area to date. He has also provided insight into genetic diseases associated with loss of protein function, such as lysosomal storage diseases and cystic fibrosis. Two small molecules discovered by the Kelly laboratory are now being tested in placebo controlled human clinical trials for the amelioration of peripheral neuropathy caused by amyloidosis. These small molecules selectively bind to the native state of transthyretin and serve as native state kinetic stabilizers. A current focus of the Kelly group is to restore the protein homeostasis capacity that protects us from numerous diseases similar to those mentioned above when we are young utilizing “proteostasis regulators”, small molecules that adapt stress responsive signaling pathways to restore normal cellular balance. They have demonstrated the efficacy of this approach in both gain- and loss-of-function diseases as demonstrated by their peer-reviewed publications. The Kelly group has also recently discovered functional amyloid structures in humans, revealing the fine line between pathology and physiology. Kelly has won numerous awards including the American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, The American Peptide Society Vincent du Vigneaud Award, the State University of New York at Fredonia Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award, the Protein Society-Dupont Young Investigator Award, The Biophysical Society National Lecturer Award, the Texas A&M University Honors Program Teacher / Scholar Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Searle Scholar Award, to name a few.