Ekaterina (Katya) Vinogradova combines tools from chemistry, chemical proteomics, and cell biology to understand and modulate immune cell function. She developed innovative multiplexed chemical proteomic platforms to generate the first global portrait of cysteine reactivity and druggability in the human immune proteome. She further illuminated the pharmacological effects of small molecule-cysteine interactions by deploying chemically elaborated electrophiles in a functional screen of T cell activation, including a set of innovative stereoisomeric covalent electrophile probes. This led to the discovery of new immunomodulatory compounds that suppress T cell activation by diverse mechanisms, including direct inhibition of protein activity and induction of protein degradation. Most recently, her lab has leveraged this integrated approach to study molecular mechanisms of T cell exhaustion.
Academic Career
Ekaterina Vinogradova studied chemistry in Moscow, Russia, and obtained her PhD in organic chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA, in 2015. After postdoctoral research at Scripps Research in La Jolla, USA, she became assistant professor and Head of the Laboratory of Chemical Immunology and Proteomics at The Rockefeller University in New York, USA, in 2020. She has received a number of awards, including the American Chemical Society Young Investigator Award, the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, and the Irma T. Hirschl/Monique Weill-Caulier Trust Research Award. She was named a C&EN Talented 12 by the American Chemical Society as well as a Searle Scholar.
