<p>Cells contain molecular machinery that targets and disposes of unwanted proteins to maintain homeostasis. Scientists think that with the help of “matchmaker” molecules called molecular glue degraders, this machinery could be hijacked to control proteins involved in diseases like cancer. But only a few of these glue degraders have been discovered so far—and mostly by chance.</p>
<p>Zuzanna Kozicka, as a Ph.D. student at Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, embarked on a deliberate search for these glues with her team and identified a novel class of molecular glue degraders with more than 40 chemically diverse members. Kozicka, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, also took a closer look at the crystal structures of the complexes that these molecules induce to glean clues about how they carry out their matchmaking services. She is the grand prize winner in molecular medicine of the <a h
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