James Wells

James Wells is a Professor in the Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology departments at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). He is a co-founding member of the Protein Engineering Department at Genentech (1982) and co-founder of Sunesis Pharmaceuticals (1998) and EpiBiologics. His research focuses on protein engineering, cell surface proteomics, and small molecule drug discovery, particularly in cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

• BA in Biochemistry and Psychology from UC Berkeley (1973)
• PhD in Biochemistry from Washington State University (1979)
• Postdoctoral training at Stanford University Medical School (1980-1982)

His work applies mass spectrometry and affinity-directed chemical tools to map cell surface proteomes in health and disease, including hypoxia-induced remodeling in pancreatic cancer and β-amyloid-driven neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's. Recent publications emphasize CRISPR screens, photocatalytic proximity labeling, and therapeutic antibody design for protein degradation.

Scientific awards include:

• Damon M. Runyon - Walter Winchell Postdoctoral Fellowship (1979-1981)
• Pfizer Award for Enzyme Chemistry (1990)
• Christian B. Anfinsen Award (1998)
• Vincent du Vignead Award (1998)
• Elected to National Academy of Sciences (1999)
• Hans Neurath Award (2003)
• Perlman Lecture Award (2006)
• Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator (2017)

NIH-funded projects (2005-2019) include technologies for protein binding partner identification, proteolysis regulation in apoptosis, and small molecule discovery for cancer and infectious diseases. He has co-authored groundbreaking work on antibody engineering, CRISPR screens for ASD risk genes, and SARS-CoV-2 detection methods.