Stephen K. Burley, Director
He joined Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in 2013, where he is a University Professor and Henry Rutgers Chair. Burley directs the RCSB Protein Data Bank (a member of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank), the Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine, and the Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (RAD) Collaboratory. He is also a Member of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, where he Co-Leads the Cancer Pharmacology Research Program.
Burley received his undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics at the University of Western Ontario in 1980. He went on to receive an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School in the joint Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program and, as a Rhodes scholar, received a D.Phil in Structural Biology from Oxford University. He trained in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and carried out post-doctoral research with Gregory A. Petsko and Nobel Laureate William N. Lipscomb at MIT and Harvard, respectively. He joined the faculty at The Rockefeller University in 1990, and became an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1994-2002) and the Richard M. and Isabel P. Furlaud Professor (1997-2002).
With William J. Rutter, Nobel Laureate David Baker, and others at the University of California at San Francisco and Rockefeller, Burley co-founded Prospect Genomics, Inc. In 2002, he became the Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice-President of SGX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. after it acquired Prospect Genomics. SGX was later acquired by Eli Lilly and Company where Burley was a Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar in Lilly Research Laboratories (2008-2012).
He has made significant contributions to our understanding of gene transcription in eukaryotes, including three-dimensional (3D) structures of the TATA Box-binding Protein, transcription factor IIb, the Myc oncoprotein, and Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 3 gamma, all bound to promoter DNA. He also carried out structural studies of eukaryotic proteins that control initiation of messenger RNA (mRNA) translation in eukaryotes, including eIF4E bound to an mRNA cap and the poly-A binding protein bound the 3¡¯ end of an mRNA.
While working in industry, Burley and colleagues built an industry-leading high-throughput platform for structure-guided drug discovery and crystallographic screening of fragments of drug-like molecules bound to target proteins. These same tools are now used by every major pharmaceutical company worldwide. At SGX and Lilly, he and his colleagues determined thousands of proprietary structures, most of which remain inside the company firewall. In 2003 under Burley¡¯s leadership, SGX deposited into the PDB the first 3D atomic-level structure of a SARS-CoV-1 viral protein (its main protease, a key drug target). This work set the stage for structure-guided discovery of nirmatrelvir (active ingredient of Paxlovid) by Pfizer.
Burley has over 360 publications and more than 1,200 experimental protein structures available in the PDB. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Crystallographic Association, and recipient of a Doctor of Science (Honoris causa) from his alma mater the University of Western Ontario. He was recently recognized with the NJEdge, Inc. Edge 2024 Research Impact Award for Pioneering Work in Structural Biology: Transformative Contributions to Biomedical Research and Global Scientific Collaboration.
