Professor Gelb's Homepage

Welcome to the Gelb Research Group

Research Interests, History, and Awards

The Gelb group combines chemical and molecular and cellular biochemistry techniques to study enzymatic process of medical importance.

Michael H. Gelb studied chemistry and biochemistry as an undergraduate at the University of California at Davis. His Ph.D. studies with Stephen G. Sligar at Yale University led to a better understanding of the catalytic mechanism of cytochrome P450. As an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of the late Robert H. Abeles at Brandeis University, Gelb studied a variety of mechanism-based inactivators of serine proteases and developed fluorinated ketones as tight-binding inhibitors of several classes of proteases. In 1985 Gelb became a faculty member in the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Washington. Major breakthroughs in the group include the development of methods to properly analyze the action of enzymes on membrane surfaces, the discovery of protein prenylation (farnesylation and geranylgeranylation) in mammalian cells (together with John A. Glomset), and the development of Isotope-Coded Affinity Tags (ICAT reagents) for proteomic applications (together with Ruedi Aebersold). His current research is in the following areas at the interface of chemistry and biology:

Structure, function, and regulation of interfacial enzymes including phospholipases A₂.
Structure-based design and combinatorial chemistry of inhibitors of drug targets from parasites that cause tropical diseases
Biochemical studies of protein prenylation
Multiplex analysis of enzymes of clinical significance and proteomics by mass spectrometry

He is the Harry and Catherine Jaynne Boand Endowed Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington and is a member of graduate training programs in Biomolecular Structure and Design and in Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Gelb's awards and honors include:

Kaplan Lecturer, Brandeis University (2009)

Harry and Catherine Jaynne Boand Endowed Professor of Chemistry (2008-)

Plenary Lecturer, BrazMedChem2008, Porto de Galinha, Brazil (2008)

National Institutes of Health Merit Award (2007-)

Plenary Lecturer, Keystone Conference on Drugs for Protozoan Paraistes, (2006)

Medicines for Malaria Venture Project of the Year (2003)

University Keck Lecturer, University of Toronto (2002)

Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry, given by the Division of Biological Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (1993)

ICI Pharmaceuticals Award for Excellence in Chemistry (now given by AstraZeneca) (1993)

Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1990-92)