Dr. Wallace Chan is the Molecular Pharmacology Highlighted Trainee Author for the May 2023 issue. He is currently Principal Scientist in Computational Chemistry at Pfizer, Boulder. The Molecular Pharmacology article that earned his selection as a Highlighted Trainee Author is titled “Application of Mixed-Solvent Molecular Dynamics Simulations for Prediction of Allosteric Sites on G-protein-Coupled Receptors” and is available at: https://doi.org/10.1124/molpharm.122.000612.

Dr. Chan received his PhD in Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Professor Yang Zhang. His thesis research was centered around G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), including database design and construction that incorporates GPCR pharmacological data and the development of a GPCR-focused virtual screening algorithm. Afterward, he spent 3 years at the University of Michigan as a Postdoctoral Trainee under the tutelage of Professor John Traynor in the Department of Pharmacology and Professor Heather Carlson in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry. During this time, he worked on opioid drug discovery employing virtual screening, applying mixed-solvent molecular dynamics simulations to find potential, novel allosteric sites on various proteins, and developing an in silico pipeline for SARS-CoV-2 drug repurposing. Three publications have resulted from these efforts, thus far.

As Principal Scientist, Dr. Chan now works in Computational Chemistry, supporting the medicinal chemistry, structural biology, and enzymology groups in chemotherapeutic discovery. In the future, he hopes to help facilitate the entry of new chemotherapeutics into clinical trials.

In Wallace’s spare time, he enjoys playing and listening to music.  He also enjoys cooking, hiking, and spending time with his wife and cats.