Levon Halabelian

Dr. Levon Halabelian is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto, and a Principal Investigator in structural biology at the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC). He received a MSc degree in applied biotechnology from Uppsala University, Sweden, and a PhD degree in biomolecular sciences from the University of Milan, Italy. During his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Cheryl Arrowsmith, he worked on structural and biophysical characterization of DNA-damage sensing proteins (HMCES), as well as protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs) that are involved in epigenetic regulation. Dr. Halabelian’s research currently focuses on using x-ray crystallography and chemical biology tools to uncover the structures and functions of human WD-repeat (WDR) domain containing proteins that are often associated with diverse human diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer. He is also involved in structure-guided drug discovery efforts for targeting disease-associated WDR proteins, such as LRRK2, RBBP7, WDR41, WDR12 as well as several other WDRs related to E3 ligases for PROTAC development. Most of his drug-discovery projects are in collaboration with pharma partners as well as with Artificial Intelligence (AI) based drug-discovery groups from academia and industry.