Exploring cell surface changes in cancer

Jim Wells’ research has spanned biotech, academia and founding a company. He’s determined that whatever he does, it doesn’t feel like “punching the clock.”

Focusing on how cell surfaces change in response to health and disease, Wells uses his seminal work in protein engineering to explore drug development targets through protein mutagenesis.

Jim Wells

“It’s important to me that my work ticks two critical boxes,” he said. “One is that this lab would be a great place to grow as a scientist, and the second is the work has to be fun.”

Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was inspired by enzymology researchers such as Daniel Koshland, Wells went to Washington State University for his Ph.D. to work under Ralph Yount who, he said, “taught me most of the things I know today, especially biochemistry and protein modification.”

Eighteen months into his postdoc at Stanford, “I realized I really enjoyed gene structure and function, and this amazing new technology called site-directed mutagenesis was just published,” Wells said. “I thought, ‘wow, this could be really amazing to apply to proteins.’”

Recombinant DNA studies were at such an early stage that Wells knew he wasn’t going to find an academic job to support this research. That’s when a friend introduced him to a company at the forefront of applying recombinant DNA for commercial use: Genentech.

At Genentech, Wells and his group engineered the first gain-of-function enzymes, growth factors and antibodies by site-directed mutagenesis. “I thought I’d be there three years to learn the technologies,” he said, “and ended up staying 16 years.”

Wells went on to start his own company, Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, before he moved in 2005 to the University of California, San Francisco, where he is a professor of chemistry.