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Elias Lolis, PhD

Professor of Pharmacology
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Additional Titles

Faculty Director, Office for Postdoctoral Affairs

About

Titles

Professor of Pharmacology

Faculty Director, Office for Postdoctoral Affairs

Biography

Elias Lolis received a BA degree in Chemistry at Columbia College and PhD in Chemistry from MIT training in structural biology. His postdoctoral training was in the Laboratory of Medical Biochemistry at Rockefeller University studying the functional interactions between advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and the immune system. He currently studies the mechanism of chemokines, the macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) family of proteins, and their receptors in disease (cancer, inflammation, and infection) using structural biology, Crispr/Cas9 in mouse models of disease, and high throughput screening of small molecules as well as designing biotherapeutics. He received a Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association Faculty Development Award in Basic Pharmacology, the Donaghue Young Investigator Award, and the GlaxoWellcome Award in Drug Discovery. He is the founder and co-founder of the Yale Macromolecular X-ray Facility and Yale Keck Bioinformatics Resource, respectively. More than 25 postdoctoral associates, seven PhD students, two postgrads, seven Yale undergraduates, ten under-represented minority summer students (BioStep and PREP), and 22 undergraduates and high school students from other schools were trained by him or his senior staff. He has been involved in the recruitment of under-represented minorities ever since he was an Assistant Professor traveling to various schools and conferences and, more recently, was a member of various committees of the 2020-21 and 2021-22 Intersections Science Fellows Symposium. He also serves as the Faculty Director of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs for the University, his department's Director of Graduate Studies, and his department's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and mentors students and postdocs in his research lab.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Postdoc
Rockefeller University (1991)
PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Biochemistry/Chemistry (1989)
BA
Columbia College (1984)

Research

Overview

We are generally interested in understanding the biology, structure, mechanism of action, and pharmacology (inhibition) of proteins in physiology and pathophysiology. Our studies are multidisciplinary and include structural biology (X-ray crystallography or NMR), molecular dynamics, high throughput screening (HPTS) and/or inhibitor design, mutational analysis, the use of strains of yeast expressing functional chemokine receptors for signaling and HTPS, and Crispr/Cas mice as a model system for models of disease.

Specific projects include:

1. Chemokine-chemokine receptor (GPCR) structures

2. High throughput screening to identify small molecule agonists and antagonists of chemokines and their GPCR receptors

3. Yeast genetics to identify and quantitate chemokine-chemokine receptor interactions

4. Mechanism of receptor activation for macrophage migration inhibitory factor

5. Identification of the substrate of MIF and structure of MIF-ligand complexes

6. Study of antagonists receptors in disease models

7. Co-crystal structures of other protein-inhibitors complexes

Medical Research Interests

Crystallography, X-Ray; Education; Enzymes and Coenzymes; High-Throughput Screening Assays; Immune System Diseases; Inflammation; Neoplasms; Parasitic Diseases; Pharmacology

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Elias Lolis's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

Get In Touch

Contacts

Academic Office Number
Lab Number
Mailing Address

Pharmacology

PO Box 208066, 333 Cedar Street

New Haven, CT 06520-8066

United States

Administrative Support

Events