Genentech: Mela Mulvihill | Director Biophysics - Sr Principal Scientist, Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology, Drug Discovery

Scientists / Our Scientists

"What motivates me is tackling tough targets and I feel deep gratitude for the opportunity to work among such talented scientists and contribute to medicines that can improve the lives of patients."

Years at Genentech

Publications at Genentech

Therapeutic targets of interest have become more difficult to drug as we are challenged to drug the undruggable. Information-rich biophysical techniques can contribute critical data in our lead finding, characterization, and prioritization efforts for early stage small molecule drug discovery programs.

I began my career at Genentech in 2014 after receiving my PhD at UC San Diego focusing on protein biophysics and a postdoc at UC Berkeley using chemoproteomics to understand disease pathways. My group at Genentech is focused on identifying and characterizing small molecule modulators of therapeutic targets using biophysics

Featured Publication

Antibody Conjugation of a Chimeric BET Degrader Enables in Vivo Activity.

ChemMedChem (2020).

Pillow TH, Adhikari P, Blake RA, Chen J, Del Rosario G, Deshmukh G, Figueroa I, Gascoigne KE, Kamath AV, Kaufman S, Kleinheinz T, Kozak KR, Latifi B, Leipold DD, Sing Li C, Li R, Mulvihill MM, O'Donohue A, Rowntree RK, Sadowsky JD, Wai J, Wang X, Wu C, Xu Z, Yao H, Yu SF, Zhang D, Zang R, Zhang H, Zhou H, Zhu X, Dragovich PS.

View Abstract on PubMed

I work in the Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology department where we specialize in developing robust, quantitative assays to support the discovery of medicines across all therapeutic areas. My group is focused on using biophysical methods including Surface Plasmon Resonance and Mass Spectrometry to facilitate the discovery and characterization of small molecule therapeutics.

I have a passion for developing lead finding strategies and my group contributes to our fragment-based lead discovery, covalent drug discovery, and degrader platforms. We also develop mechanistic assays to support in-depth characterization of targets and early leads to prioritize the highest quality chemical matter. We have risen to the challenge to meet the increase in target difficulty with an increase in assay sophistication.

Engineering ERα degraders with pleiotropic ubiquitin ligase ligands maximizes therapeutic efficacy by co-opting distinct effector ligases

Cell Chemical Biology, ISSN: 24519456

Anna Shemorry; Willem Den Besten; Melinda M. Mulvihill; Curt J. Essenburg; Nicole Blaquiere; Tracy L. Kleinheinz; Elisia Villemure; Franklin V. Peale Jr.; Gauri Deshmukh; Danilo Maddalo; Elizabeth S. Levy; Kebing Yu; Matthew R. Steensma; Elizabeth A. Tovar; Emily Wolfrum; Karthik Nagapudi; Robert A. Blake; William F. Forrest; Steven T. Staben; Carrie R. Graveel; Wayne J. Fairbrother; Ingrid E. Wertz

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Mela Mulvihill

Director Biophysics - Sr Principal Scientist, Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology, Drug Discovery

Featured Publication

Antibody Conjugation of a Chimeric BET Degrader Enables in Vivo Activity.