Stephen W. Fesik PhD

Stephen W. Fesik, Ph.D. is the Orrin H. Ingram, II Chair in Cancer Research and a Professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Chemistry in Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology (VICB) and the Center for Structural Biology (CSB). The focus of his research is on cancer drug discovery using fragment-based approaches and structure-based drug design. Prior to joining Vanderbilt in May 2009, Dr. Fesik was the Divisional Vice President of Cancer Research at Abbott (2000-2009) where he built a pipeline of anti-cancer compounds. In addition, while he was at Abbott, he developed several new NMR methods, determined the three-dimensional structures of several proteins and protein/ligand complexes, pioneered a method for drug discovery called SAR by NMR, and applied this method to identify and optimize ligands for binding to many protein drug targets.

Dr. Fesik has published more than 270 papers, trained over 55 postdoctoral fellows, and has been a reviewer for the NIH Biophysical Chemistry Study Section, the NCI Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) Program, and CPRIT. He has also served as a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Journal of Biomolecular NMR, Biophysical Journal, Molecular Cell, Chemical Biology & Drug Design, ChemMedChem, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Oncogene, Combinatorial Chemistry and High Throughput Screening, Cancer Research, Cell Death and Differentiation, and the Highlights Advisory Panel for Nature Reviews Cancer. Dr. Fesik has served on the Keystone Scientific Advisory Board, Board of Directors and the Scientific Advisory Board of the UPenn Abramson Cancer Center, the Bruker Board of Directors, and the Scientific Advisory Board of Aileron Therapeutics.

Dr. Fesik has obtained several awards, including the Chairman’s Award (1996), Outstanding Researcher of the Year Award (1997), and the Researcher of the Year Team Award (2008) from Abbott, the Servier Lecturer Award (1998) from the University of Montreal, the ASBMB-Fritz Lipmann Lectureship Award (1999), the Lifetime Achievement Award in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance from EAS (2003), the SBS Technology Innovation Award (2010), the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (2010), the Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2010), the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research (2012), and The Lustgarten Foundation Research Investigator Award (2015).