Stephen W. Fesik, Ph.D. is the Orrin H. Ingram, II Chair in Cancer Research and a Professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Chemistry at Vanderbilt University. He is a member of the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology, and the Center for Structural Biology. The focus of his research is on cancer drug discovery using fragment-based approaches and structure-based design. Prior to joining Vanderbilt in May 2009, Dr. Fesik was the Vice President of Cancer Research at Abbott. While he was at Abbott, he developed new NMR methods, determined the three-dimensional structures of proteins, pioneered a fragment-based method for drug discovery called SAR by NMR, and applied this method to many protein drug targets. Dr. Fesik has published more than 295 papers, trained 68 postdoctoral fellows, has served as a member of the Editorial Boards of many scientific journals and scientific advisory boards, and won many awards, including the Chairman’s Award (1996), Outstanding Researcher of the Year Award (1997), and the Researcher of the Year Team Award (2008) from Abbott, the Servier Lecturer Award (1998) from the University of Montreal, the ASBMB-Fritz Lipmann Lectureship Award (1999), the Lifetime Achievement Award in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance from EAS (2003), the SBS Technology Innovation Award (2010), the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (2010), the Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2010), the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research (2012), The Lustgarten Foundation Research Investigator Award (2015), and 2021 Chester Stock Award at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Fesik is co-investigator for Project 1 at the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Discovery AViDD Center (READDI-AC).
