Fran Sverdrup PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Saint Louis University

Dr. Fran Sverdrup is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Saint Louis University School of Medicine. He has extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry where his previous discovery research focused on new target identification and validation in the therapeutic areas of inflammation, immunology and virology. At Saint Louis University, his research is focused on drug discovery and the epigenetic control of gene expression in FSHD. His lab has employed chemical genetics and candidate gene knockdowns to identify druggable pathways that regulate DUX4 expression. For promising therapeutic approaches, a mouse xenograft model of human FSHD is utilized to establish pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic relationships of drug candidates. The xenograft model conserves the primate-specific DUX4 locus and allows evaluation of drugs that work at an epigenetic level.

See also: https://biochem.slu.edu/people/sverdrup/