Kim Janda

Kim D. Janda (born August 23, 1957) is an American chemist who studies on medicinal chemistry, molecular biology, immunology and neuropharmacology.

Janda currently holds the rank of the Ely R. Callaway, Jr. Chaired Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Immunology at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, California and is also the Director of the Worm Institute of Research and Medicine (WIRM) and a Skaggs Scholar within the Skaggs Institute of Chemical Biology, both at TSRI. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including an NIH First Award (1990), Sloan Fellowship (1993) and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1999).

Janda obtained a B.S. in Clinical Chemistry from the University of South Florida in 1980. He then studied at the University of Arizona and obtained a M.S. in Organic Chemistry (1983) and a Ph.D. in 1984. He carried out postdoctoral research at the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic (which would later become The Scripps Research Institute), where he remained, becoming a full professor in 1996.

Janda’s independent career started working on catalytic antibodies. In 1993, his group was the first to describe how a catalytic antibody can reroute a chemically disfavored reaction to give an endo Diels-Alder cyclization product rather than the uncatalyzed exo product. A second research infusion in this area attributable to Janda was the elucidation of the concept of reactive immunization.

A second area of research Janda’s group has pioneered is the field of "immunopharmacotherapy" a term coined by Janda’s laboratory to describe the use of the immune system to target drug addiction and obesity. Janda demonstrated that one could manipulate the immune system to generate antibodies against cocaine. He has demonstrated that antibodies resulting from this approach can protect from the lethal effects of cocaine overdose, even when administered after cocaine exposure. Recently, he detailed the treatment of cocaine addiction with viruses. Janda and colleagues then showed that an active vaccine against the orexigenic hormone ghrelin can slow the rate of weight gain, and adiposity, and do this through an entirely metabolic mechanism, as food intake was unchanged.

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