Claire Park

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Claire graduated with a B.A. in Chemistry from Smith College in 2021. As an undergraduate, she worked in the Shea Lab to develop an intramolecular Nicholas reaction for the synthesis of bioorthogonal click chemistry substrates. At UCLA this summer, she is working in Dr. Patrick Harran’s lab to investigate molecular properties of cell-permeable macrocyclic compounds. Permeation of small, orally active drugs is traditionally estimated via Lipinski's rule of 5 (Ro5) which primarily considers physicochemical factors. However, venturing outside the Ro5 chemical space would enhance opportunities to develop therapeutics against “difficult” targets such as proteases, GPCRs, and protein-protein interactions. Currently, a clear guideline to assess the passive permeability of macrocycles does not currently exist. The Harran Lab has recently converted their novel scaffolding methodology into a computational simulation, Composite Peptide Macrocycle Generator (CPMG), to construct a library of over 2 billion macrocycles. In order to selectively screen compounds, Claire will use Principal Component Analysis to identify promising trends based on previously untested, three-dimension features. Claire would like to thank Dr. Patrick Harran and her student mentor, Ishika Saha, for their invaluable support, as well as the Amgen Foundation for this opportunity to conduct research at UCLA this summer. 

Claire graduated with a B.A. in Chemistry from Smith College in 2021. As an undergraduate, she worked in the Shea Lab to develop an intramolecular Nicholas reaction for the synthesis of bioorthogonal click chemistry substrates.

At UCLA this summer, she is working in Dr. Patrick Harran’s lab to investigate molecular properties of cell-permeable macrocyclic compounds. Permeation of small, orally active drugs is traditionally estimated via Lipinski’s rule of 5 (Ro5) which primarily considers physicochemical factors. However, venturing outside the Ro5 chemical space would enhance opportunities to develop therapeutics against “difficult” targets such as proteases, GPCRs, and protein-protein interactions. Currently, a clear guideline to assess the passive permeability of macrocycles does not currently exist. The Harran Lab has recently converted their novel scaffolding methodology into a computational simulation, Composite Peptide Macrocycle Generator (CPMG), to construct a library of over 2 billion macrocycles. In order to selectively screen compounds, Claire will use Principal Component Analysis to identify promising trends based on previously untested, three-dimension features.

Claire would like to thank Dr. Patrick Harran and her student mentor, Ishika Saha, for their invaluable support, as well as the Amgen Foundation for this opportunity to conduct research at UCLA this summer.