Andrew Kruse

Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard University

Speaker

Dr. Kruse is a Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the structure and function of transmembrane receptors, using a combination of biophysical and cell biological approaches. Research in the Kruse lab also makes extensive use of combinatorial protein engineering methods such as yeast surface display of single-domain antibody fragments.

Dr. Kruse began his independent career as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School in 2014. Key research accomplishments include defining the structural basis for agonist action at the angiotensin II type 1 receptor and other G protein-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), cloning the sigma-2 receptor, and determining the first structure of a tetraspanin protein and showing how it regulates B cell activation. The Kruse lab also developed a single-domain antibody fragment discovery platform. Dr. Kruse is a co-founder of biotechnology companies Tectonic Therapeutic and Seismic Therapeutic, as well as the Institute for Protein Innovation, a non-profit research organization. He has received awards including the John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology, an Amgen Young Investigator Award (2019), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2017), a Vallee Scholars Award (2016), and an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (2015). He received B.S. degrees in Mathematics and Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota in 2009, and a Ph.D. in Structural Biology at Stanford University in 2014, where he trained with Prof. Brian Kobilka.