James Allen Wells (born April 28, 1950) is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)[1] and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
He is a pioneer in protein engineering, phage display, fragment-based lead discovery, cellular apoptosis, and the cell surface proteome.
At Sunesis, the group developed a novel technology for site-directed fragment-based drug discovery, Tethering,[10][11] and applied it to cancer and inflammation targets.
His own lab initially focused on the molecular basis of cell death as applied to cancer and inflammation through elaborating native substrates of caspases.
The Wells Lab now investigates how cell surface proteomes change in health and disease by applying mass spectrometry and protein and antibody engineering, to understand and disrupt human-disease-associated signaling processes.