K. Christopher Garcia

Dr. K. Christopher Garcia, Ph.D., an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, studies the structural, mechanistic, and functional aspects of receptor-ligand interactions that play important roles in mammalian biology and human disease. To do this, he blends traditional structural approaches with ligand engineering and discovery. His goal is to paint a detailed mechanistic picture – from the outside to the inside of a cell – of how ligand binding is structurally coupled to receptor activation, and to exploit this information to manipulate signaling with engineered ligands, potentially resulting in therapeutics. Dr. Garcia is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.