About

Alan Saghatelian is a Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where his lab works at the interface of chemistry and biology to discover new molecules that shape human health and disease. His group is best known for two major discoveries. The first is a new class of lipids called FAHFAs (fatty acid esters of hydroxy fatty acids), which his lab identified in mammalian tissues and showed to have anti-diabetic and anti-inflammatory properties — opening up an entirely new area of lipid biology with implications for metabolic disease. The second is the discovery of “microproteins,” a hidden class of tiny proteins encoded by short open reading frames that were long overlooked in the human genome, and which his group has shown play important roles in metabolism, immunity, and neurodegeneration. Alongside his academic work, Alan is a co-founder of Exo Therapeutics, a biotech company developing first-in-class small molecule drugs for autoimmune disease. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute and was a faculty member at Harvard University before joining Salk.