Stephen K. Burley
Stephen K. Burley | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 13, 1957 |
| Education | University of Western Ontario (BS) Exeter College, Oxford (MS, PhD) Harvard University (MD) |
| Scientific career | |
| Workplaces | Rutgers University Lilly Research Laboratories Rockefeller University Howard Hughes Medical Institute |
| Thesis | Molecular arrangement in viruses studied by X-ray and neutron scattering and other physical techniques (1983) |
| Andrew Miller | |
Stephen Kevin Burley is a British-born scientist, naturalized in both Canada and the United States. He is known as an expert in structural biology, proteomics, structure/fragment based drug discovery, and clinical medicine/oncology.
He joined Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in 2013, where he is a University Professor and Henry Rutgers Chair. Burley directs the RCSB Protein Data Bank (a member of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank), the Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine, and the Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (RAD) Collaboratory.
Burley has over 360 publications and more than 1,200 experimental protein structures available in the Protein Data Bank archive.
Education and Career
Following undergraduate training in physics and mathematics at the University of Western Ontario[1], Burley received an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School in the joint Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program and, as a Rhodes scholar[2], received a D.Phil in Structural Biology from Oxford University. He trained in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and carried out post-doctoral research with Gregory A. Petsko and Nobel Laureate William N. Lipscomb at MIT and Harvard, respectively.
He joined the faculty at The Rockefeller University in 1990, and became an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1994-2002) and the Richard M. and Isabel P. Furlaud Professor (1997-2002). During time on the Rockfeller faculty, he also served as Founding Director of the Pels Family Center, Chair of the Academic Senate, and Deputy for Academic Affairs reporting directly to the President of the University.
With William J. Rutter, Nobel Laureate David Baker, and others at the University of California at San Francisco and Rockefeller, Burley co-founded Prospect Genomics, Inc.[3] In 2002, he resigned his roles at Rockefeller and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to become the Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice-President of SGX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. after it acquired Prospect Genomics. Following a 2006 Initial Public Offering on the NASDAQ and multiple filings of Investigational New Drug Applications, SGX was acquired by Eli Lilly and Company where Burley was a Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar in Lilly Research Laboratories (2008-2012)[4].
In 2013, Burley joined Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey[5] as Director of the Center for Integrative Proteomics Research and became director of the RCSB PDB (US regional data center for the worldwide PDB) in 2014, succeeding Prof. Helen Berman[6].
Research
Burley made significant contributions to our understanding of gene transcription in eukaryotes, including three-dimensional (3D) structures of the TATA Box-binding Protein[7], transcription factor IIb[8], the Myc oncoprotein[9], and Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 3 gamma[10], all bound to promoter DNA. He also carried out structural studies of eukaryotic proteins that control initiation of messenger RNA (mRNA) translation in eukaryotes, including eIF4E bound to an mRNA cap (10.1016/s0092-8674(00)80280-9) and the poly-A binding protein bound the 3’ end of an mRNA[11].
While working in industry, Burley was chief scientific officer and senior vice-president for research at SGX Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he and his colleagues built an industry-leading high-throughput platform for structure-guided drug discovery and crystallographic screening of fragments of drug-like molecules bound to target proteins. These same tools are now used by every major pharmaceutical company worldwide.
Other activities
As of June 2026, Burley is a member of the editorial board for Oncogene.[12]
Honors and awards
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (elected 1995)
References
- ↑ "Structural GenomiX Appoints Stephen K. Burley as Chief Scientific Officer -- re> SAN DIEGO, Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ --". Archived from the original on 13 October 2014.
- ↑ "Introducing Professor Stephen K. Burley". Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
- ↑ "PDB COMMUNITY FOCUS: Stephen K. Burley, Structural GenomiX, Inc". RCSB PDB NEWSLETTER.
- ↑ "Stephen K. Burley, Director". RCSB PDB.
- ↑ "Rutgers recruits top researcher to head Center for Integrative Proteomics Research". NJBIZ.
- ↑ "RCSB PDB Leadership Transition". RCSB PDB.
- ↑ Nikolov, D. (1992). "Crystal structure of TFIID TATA-box binding protein". Nature. 360: 40–46. doi:10.1038/360040a0.
- ↑ Nikolov, D. (1995). "Crystal structure of a TFIIB–TBP–TATA-element ternary complex". Nature. 377: 119–128. doi:10.1038/377119a0.
- ↑ Nair, S. (2003). "X-ray structures of Myc-Max and Mad-Max recognizing DNA. Molecular bases of regulation by proto-oncogenic transcription factors". Cell. 112: 193–205. doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(02)01284-9.
- ↑ Clark, K. (1993). "Co-crystal structure of the HNF-3/fork head DNA-recognition motif resembles histone H5". Nature. 364: 412–420. doi:10.1038/364412a0.
- ↑ Rahul, D. (1999). "Recognition of Polyadenylate RNA by the Poly(A)-Binding Protein". Cell. 98: 835–845. doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(00)81517-2.
- ↑ "Editorial Board". Oncogene. Retrieved 8 June 2026.