Thomas Hermann
Co-Founder, Scientific Advisor & Board Director Syrna Therapeutics Inc
Thomas Hermann is a chemist, scholar and entrepreneur, and Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UC San Diego. He is Co-Founder, Scientific Advisor and Board Director of Syrna Therapeutics, where his work supports structure-guided discovery of small molecules targeting mRNA, and he is also Founding Co-Director of UC San Diego’s Center for Drug Discovery Innovation. His research focuses on RNA structure, molecular recognition and assembly, with applications in RNA-targeted drug discovery and nucleic acid nanotechnology.
Seminars
Thursday 12th November 2026
Rational, Structure-Guided Design of Small Molecule Covalent Translation Inhibitors Targeting mRNA
8:30 am
- Identifying structured regions in mRNA as small molecule targets using cryoEM
- Using 3D information to locate small molecule binding site and understand effect of small molecule binding on RNA structure
- Dependence of translation inhibition on binding site induced proximity and proper orientation of electrophile within binding site
- Importance of using cooler electrophiles when designing covalent translation inhibitors
