Gregory Craven, Ph.D.

Gregory Craven is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. Greg earned a first-class degree in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and completed his Ph.D. at Imperial College London, working with Professors David Mann, Alan Armstrong, and Ed Tate. His doctoral research focused on fragment-based drug discovery and cysteine targeting. He then conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco with Professor Jack Taunton, where he developed lysine-targeted covalent inhibitors and chemoproteomic methods. Notably, this work led to the discovery of the first mutant-selective inhibitor of AKT1(E17K), which is a common driver of breast cancer.

Research

The Craven lab designs small molecule inhibitors and chemical tools to probe and perturb dysregulated signaling pathways, especially in cancer. We take an interdisciplinary approach that combines:

• Small-molecule design and synthesis
• Proteomic mass spectrometry
• Structural biology and biochemistry

We exploit covalent inhibition, stereochemistry, and metal-binding to uncover new biology and inform therapeutic strategies in cancer. We aim to understand how cancer-relevant proteins are regulated and to reveal ligandable vulnerabilities that can be harnessed for precision therapy.