Ferrell takes charge of molecular pharmacology department
Jim Ferrell
BY ROSANNE SPECTOR
The Department of Molecular Pharmacology may be the medical school's most interdisciplinary department. Among its faculty of eight are scientists trained in chemistry, biophysics and math. So its new chair, Jim Ferrell, is a fitting leader for the multitalented crew.
Ferrell's a chemist, having earned a PhD working in the lab of professor Wray Huestis, PhD, on how blood cells hold their shapes, and he's an MD, too, graduating from the medical school in 1986.
Ferrell joined the molecular pharmacology department in 1992, teaching biology to undergraduates; molecular pharmacology to graduate and medical students and pursing research that applies mathematics and quantitative techniques to cell biology. He became chair in November when his predecessor, Daria Mochly-Rosen, PhD, took the post of senior associate dean for research.
Ferrell's goal is to strengthen the department's capabilities in the nascent fields of chemical biology and quantitative biology. Over the next two years he plans to hire several faculty members. He's looking for specialists in chemical biology—the application of synthetic organic chemistry to biological problems—and in systems biology, which involves the study of signaling networks.
"But we also have our eye out for anyone who is an extraordinarily good scientist who would complement our existing expertise," he said.
Pharmacology itself began about 30 years ago as the study of drug metabolism and action. Decades later, molecular pharmacology zeroed in on the signaling networks the drugs affect.
Now Stanford's department is leading a new trend by taking a quantitative rather than qualitative approach to molecular studies of pathways—borrowing techniques from the physical sciences such as chemistry.
Ferrell's recent work focuses on the signal transduction network that regulates cell division.
"Our hope is that by breaking this complicated network down into small, modular subcircuits or motifs, each simple enough to be relatively easily understood, we might be able to work our way up to an understanding of the whole network," said Ferrell. "We'd also love to know what sorts of motifs are used in other biological circuits. For example, how does nature build a reliable biological switch? An amplifier? A memory circuit? Moreover, we want to know if nature has evolved the same types of circuits that electrical engineers use for these functions. And if not, why not?
"After decades of identifying genes, it's time to move up a level of complexity," he said. "It's an exciting time in the field."
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