Jason Gestwicki

Jason Gestwicki is a faculty member at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Pharmacy, where he leads the Gestwicki Laboratory. His research focuses on molecular chaperones, protein homeostasis, and protein misfolding disorders, employing chemical biology strategies to discover and optimize chemical inhibitors targeting allosteric and protein-protein interaction sites.

• Education: B.S. in Chemistry from State University of New York - Fredonia (1997), Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of Wisconsin-Madison (2002), Post-doctoral fellowship in Chemical Biology at Stanford University (2005)

His work spans neurodegeneration (e.g., tau proteostasis, Alzheimer's disease), cancer biology (e.g., N-Myc regulation in neuroendocrine prostate cancer), and drug discovery (e.g., fluoroprobes for tau fibrils, DSFworld software for protein stability analysis). Recent publications highlight collaborations with experts in structural biology, iPSC modeling, and ubiquitin ligase mechanisms.

Scientific Awards & Honors:

• National Science Foundation CAREER award
• Elected Fellow, AAAS and CSSI
• Dean's Apple Award for Outstanding Teaching (2018, 2019)
• Everson Lecture (2020)
• UCSF Excellence in Teaching (2015)

He has secured major NIH grants (R01, R21) for projects on tau proteostasis, corneal endothelial dystrophies, and protein stability methods. His lab also contributes to software development (DSFworld) and antimalarial research targeting Plasmodium heat shock proteins.