Welcome to the Handel Lab!

Our laboratory is located in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science at University of California, San Diego. Our research is focused on structural and functional studies of chemokines and chemokine receptors. These proteins control the migration of cells during development, immune surveillance, and inflammation, but they are also involved in numerous diseases including inflammatory diseases, atherosclerosis, cancer, and HIV. To understand how they function, and to discover ways to inhibit their activity for therapeutic approaches, we use a multidisciplinary approach involving structure coupled with mutagenesis and cell based assays of function (migration, signaling, BRET studies of protein-protein interactions in cells, proteomics). In vivo studies are used when appropriate. Research areas are described in more detail under the Research tab. The Figure to the right is a collage of a 96 well plate used for many types of cell and biochemcial assays, the recently solved structure of chemokine receptor, CXCR4, and a size exclusion chromatogram (background), which is used to determine the quality of purified receptor.