Kejia Wu
Post Doc, Baker Lab, Institute for Protein Design Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Kejia Wu is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Baker Lab at the Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington, where she develops methods to design and characterize binders for peptides and intrinsically disordered regions. Her work focuses on capturing transient, weak, and highly dynamic interactions, and on functionalizing designed binders to probe complex biological mechanisms. Kejia has contributed to high-impact publications advancing binder design for disordered targets and expanding the toolkit for studying structural ensembles. At the Summit, she will discuss biophysical strategies for characterizing IDPs and interpreting data when no single static structure exists.
Seminars
- Why IDRs have resisted drug discovery: How conformational heterogeneity, short linear motifs, and phase-separation biology place IDPs at the center of disease, yet beyond the reach of traditional modalities
- A new design paradigm for disordered targets: Deep-learning–enabled de novo binders and proteases that selectively recognize short (≥8 aa) and PTM-defined motifs within IDRs, achieving high affinity and specificity
- What programmable control unlocks: Case studies across oncology, neurodegeneration, and viral targets demonstrating inhibition, relocalization, and catalytic cleavage as new therapeutic mechanisms
