Peter Dervan

Peter B. Dervan is the Bren Professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology. The primary focus of his research is the development and study of small organic molecules that can sequence-specifically recognize DNA, a field in which he is an internationally recognized authority. He is married to fellow Caltech chemist Jacqueline Barton.

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Education

Dervan received his B.S. from Boston College in 1967. He went on to graduate study at Yale University in the laboratory of Jerome Berson. He received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1972, and performed post-doctoral research at Stanford through 1973, as a NIH Postdoctoral Fellow.

Career

From Stanford, Dervan became an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Caltech. He received tenure in 1979 and is currently the Bren Professor of Chemistry. He is a founding member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Gilead Sciences. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Beckman Coulter. He serves on the editorial advisory board for the journals Bioorganic Chemistry, Bioconjugate Chemistry, Tetrahedron (journal), Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry, Current Opinion in Drug Discovery and Development, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and ACS Chemical Biology.

Selected publications

• Nickols, N.G.; P.B. Dervan (2007). "Suppression of androgen receptor-mediated gene expression by a sequence-specific DNA-binding polyamide". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104: 10418-10423.

• Dervan, P.B.; A.T. Poulin-Kerstien and E.J. Fechter and B.S. Edelson (2005). "Regulation of Gene Expression by Synthetic DNA-Binding Ligands". Top. Curr. Chem. 235: 1-31.