Jeffrey L Brodsky

Jeffrey L. Brodsky is the Avinoff Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, where he leads the Center for Protein Conformational Diseases. His research, in part, focuses on understanding how drugs and genetic approaches can correct defects in protein architecture.

Approximately one-third of the human proteome, or 8000 proteins, must enter the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and fold into their proper conformations. What happens when protein folding is compromised? With colleagues he discovered that defective species are returned to the cytoplasm and destroyed, thus tempering their toxic effects. They named this process ER associated degradation (ERAD). To date, over 800 papers on this topic and 70 human diseases have been linked to the ERAD pathway. Brodsky continues to deepen his fundamental discovery, defining the molecular underpinnings of the ERAD pathway and generating drugs to correct diseases associated with protein misfolding.

Brodsky has served on the editorial boards of three journals, has published >250 scientific papers, holds 3 patents, and has acted as a scientific consultant for several disease foundations and biotech/pharmaceutical companies.