Andrey Ivanov

Dr. Andrey Ivanov Andrey Ivanov, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at Emory University School of Medicine and the Leader of the Computational Chemical Biology and Systems Pharmacology (CCBSP) Group at Emory Chemical Biology Discovery Center (ECBDC). Dr. Ivanov is a member of the Discovery and Developmental Therapeutics Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute. Dr. Ivanov received his MS degree in Chemistry in 2002 from Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. He received Ph.D. in Organic chemistry from the Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds, Chernogolovka, Russia in 2004. He also received a Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry in 2004 from the Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds, Chernogolovka, Russia. In his research, Dr. Ivanov combines experimental molecular biology with state-of-the-art bioinformatics and computational systems biology approaches to study and regulate the molecular connectivity between the biological pathways. He develops and applies methods of computational molecular modeling, cheminformatics, and virtual screening to facilitate drug discovery and therapeutic development. With a strong background in organic chemistry and expertise in protein modeling, Dr. Ivanov has developed accurate models to discover and optimize new pharmacologically active compounds for different types of proteins, including GPCRs, enzymes, and non-enzymatic proteins. During his fellowship at the NIH NIDDK, he has successfully applied the structure-based and ligand-based computational screening approaches to discover new antagonists of the human adenosine and P2Y, with the nano-molar potency range and significant subtype selectivity. His contribution in the development of the P2Y receptor antagonist was recognized by the National Institutes of Health Fellows Award for Research Excellence Award, National Institutes of Health, 2008. In 2009, Dr. Ivanov joined the Department of Biochemistry at Emory University. His predictive models of Plasmodium adenosine deaminase (ADA) allowed the identification of specific amino acid residues critical for ADA species selective ligand recognition to facilitate the discovery of new compounds with enhanced selectivity versus the human ADA. Now, as Leader of the ECBDC CCBSP, Dr. Ivanov integrates the computational approaches with the experimental high-throughput screening (HTS) to identify therapeutically significant protein-protein interactions and pharmacologically active compounds. Dr. Ivanov serves as a co-investigator leading the cheminformatics and bioinformatics effort to support the development of new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Ivanov co-leads the studies aimed to define the network of cancer-associated protein-protein interactions. As an example, the high-throughput screening for lung cancer-associated PPIs supported with the bioinformatics analysis of cancer genomics, proteomics, clinical, and pharmacological data revealed more than 300 novel PPIs, as potential targets for therapeutic intervention. To enable the exploration of this PPI network for the research community, termed the OncoPPi network version 1, Dr. Ivanov leads the development of Emory OncoPPi Portal. The OncoPPi network has already revealed multiple new mechanisms of oncogenic signaling, including a new regulatory mechanism for the activation of the master regulator of cell growth MYC by mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 3. Based on this discovery, Dr. Ivanov initiated research in his lab aimed to uncover the potential of MKK3-MYC interaction as a therapeutic target in proliferative diseases. He discovered that MKK3 promotes MYC transcriptional activity and protein stability independently of MKK3 kinase activity, indicating a novel function for this type of kinases as adaptor proteins. For these studies in 2018 Dr. Ivanov has received the first Fadlo R. Khuri Translational Research Award, Emory Winship Cancer Institute, and more recently, the Winship American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant Award, 2020. In 2021 Dr. Ivanov has received Emory Hidden Gem Award. Dr. Ivanov represents Emory University at the Cancer Target Discovery and Development network (CTD2), NIH/NCI, since 2013. He is a chair of the Communication Committee of the International Chemical Biology Society (ICBS), since 2019, and represents the North America Chapter at the ICBS Communication Committee, since 2011. Dr. Ivanov has more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, including 5 book chapters. Since 2021, Dr. Ivanov is an Associate Editor of the Frontiers in Genetics, Computation Genomics section.