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Steven Kliewer earned his B.S. in biochemistry from Brown University in 1985 and his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1990. From 1990-1993, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Ronald Evans at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA, where he began his studies on orphan nuclear receptors. During this period, he discovered the central role that the retinoid receptor RXR plays as an obligate heterodimer partner for the vitamin D, thyroid hormone, retinoic acid, and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors. In 1993, he joined Glaxo, Inc. in Research Triangle Park, NC, where he founded a scientific group devoted to exploiting orphan nuclear receptors as drug discovery targets. Among his achievements at Glaxo was the discovery that the fatty acid receptor PPAR-gamma is the molecular target for the antidiabetic glitazone class of drugs, which ultimately led to the clinical development compound farglitazar. He also discovered the xenobiotic receptor PXR and showed that it is responsible for an important class of drug-drug interactions. A practical consequence of this work is that new drugs can be screened efficiently for harmful interactions with other medications. In 2002, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas where he is currently Professor of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology and holds the Hamon Distinguished Chair in Basic Cancer Research. His research is focused on nuclear receptors and their roles in xenobiotic and lipid metabolism. | 