Janetka named distinguished professor

James Janetka has been named the inaugural Carl Frieden Distinguished Professor by Washington University in St. Louis. Frieden has been a faculty member at Washington University since 1957. Frieden dedicated his career to determining protein folding mechanisms and intermediates.

James Janetka

Janetka began his career working in industry roles at Vertex Pharmaceuticals and AstraZeneca before joining the faculty at Washington University in 2009. Now a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and molecular microbiology at WashU, his work focuses on structure-based drug design and development across a variety of protein targets and disease relevancies such as bacterial infections, including urinary tract infections, or UTIs, COVID-19, flu and other viral infections, parasitic infections and cancer. His development of FimH inhibitors, which target the ability of UTI pathogens to bind and colonize areas of infection, laid the foundation for a UTI treatment currently in clinical trials. The lab is currently developing small-molecule inhibitors of transmembrane serine proteases as antiviral therapeutics, as well as protease, G protein-coupled receptors and kinase inhibitors as anthelmintics and new drugs to treat toxoplasmosis.

Janetka cofounded ProteXase Therapeutics, Inc. and Fimbrion Therapeutics, Inc., companies that develop anticancer therapies to overcome chemotherapy resistance and antibiotic-sparing drugs targeting bacteria such as Pseudomonas and Tuberculosis, respectively. He received the 2018 St. Louis Section American Chemical Society Award and is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.