John Chorba, MD

Assoc Professor in Residence
Medicine
+1 415 502-2912
Research Description: 

My interests lie in using chemical tools to probe biological mechanisms of disease, with the ultimate goal of developing a better understanding of heart disease to develop novel therapeutics. Currently, my work focuses on the processing mechanisms of PCSK9, a protein that causes elevated cholesterol levels, so as to develop new drug targets against atherosclerosis.

Primary Thematic Area: 
Vascular & Cardiac Biology
Secondary Thematic Area: 
Tissue / Organ Biology & Endocrinology
Research Summary: 
The Chemical Biology of Cardiometabolic Disease
Mentorship Development: 

The central theme of the Chorba Lab is to model clinically relevant phenomena in a controlled environment. The major goals are to develop new therapies, targets, and diagnostics that change paradigms in medicine. Inspired by clinical practice, we 1) develop biochemical tools and 2) tackle seemingly undruggable targets to 3) understand the mechanistic basis of cardiometabolic disease and beyond. We work at the interface of chemistry and biology, using the bidirectionality of bench-to-bedside research to expand our findings from any given disease model to the fundamental biology at play.

Websites

Publications: 

Deep Learning Algorithms to Detect Murmurs Associated With Structural Heart Disease.

Journal of the American Heart Association

Prince J, Maidens J, Kieu S, Currie C, Barbosa D, Hitchcock C, Saltman A, Norozi K, Wiesner P, Slamon N, Del Grippo E, Padmanabhan D, Subramanian A, Manjunath C, Chorba J, Venkatraman S

Rapid Multiplexed Flow Cytometric Validation of CRISPRi sgRNAs in Tissue Culture.

Bio-protocol

Chorba JS, Xia VQ, Smith GA, Padmanabhan A

Heparin Does Not Regulate Circulating Human PCSK9 (Proprotein Convertase Subtilisin-Kexin Type 9) in a General Population-Brief Report.

Arteriosclerosis, thrombosis, and vascular biology

Xia VQ, Ong CM, Zier LS, MacGregor JS, Wu AHB, Chorba JS

Cold shock domain-containing protein E1 is a posttranscriptional regulator of the LDL receptor.

Science translational medicine

Smith GA, Padmanabhan A, Lau BH, Pampana A, Li L, Lee CY, Pelonero A, Nishino T, Sadagopan N, Xia VQ, Jain R, Natarajan P, Wu RS, Black BL, Srivastava D, Shokat KM, Chorba JS