Drew Adams

Drew graduated from Swarthmore College with Highest Honors and obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Harvard University (Prof. David A. Evans). He then pivoted toward chemical biology during postdoctoral studies with Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Drew joined the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine's Genetics Department in 2015 as an Assistant Professor, and in July 2018 he was appointed as the Thomas F. Peterson, Jr. Professor of Novel Therapeutics. The Adams Lab uses high-throughput screening, chemical biology techniques, and organic synthesis to elucidate the functions of small-molecule probes. Recently the lab reported that cellular accumulation of specific sterol precursors to cholesterol drives the formation of new oligodendrocytes, a finding that has validated new targets and spurred new drug discovery efforts for multiple sclerosis.