Stuart Schreiber's lab studies the science of therapeutics. Researchers in his group rely on human biology to identify therapeutic targets that have been validated prior to testing in humans, and chemistry and chemical biology to discover small molecules that modulate the targets in ways required to provide relief or protection from disease.

Schreiber and his group members have discovered principles that underlie information transfer and storage in cells, specifically discoveries relating to signaling by the phosphatase calcineurin and kinase mTOR (demonstrating for the first time that drugs can result from the targeting of protein kinases and protein phosphatases), gene regulation by chromatin-modifying histone deacetylases, small-molecule dimerizers that activate cellular processes by enforced proximity, and small-molecule probes of challenging targets and processes (e.g., transcription factors, oncogenes, protein/protein interactions, transdifferentiation) that relate to human disease. Their work has contributed to diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) and discovery-based small-molecule screening in an open data-sharing environment.

In current research, the Schreiber lab is studying the mechanisms by which cancers resist therapies by exploring a vulnerability of a cell state that group members discovered as central to resistance of many cancers to many therapies. The lab is also studying a novel mechanism our brains use to maintain brain health, and therapeutic agents that enhance the brain-protective mechanism. Each of these studies is supported by efforts to discover small-molecule “binders” that alter functions of proteins by changing their interactomes and lifetimes. The lab is using modern methods of asymmetric synthesis to yield candidate binders bearing DNA barcodes.