Chemical biology of proteostasis

The Paavilainen lab develops and uses innovative technologies such as chemical biology, structural biology and diverse high content screening approaches to study mechanisms of protein homeostasis establishment and maintenance.

A major focus of our research is currently to understand the function of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER  protein biogenesis and homeostasis machinery in the ER. We ask how the cells achieve and maintain a delicate balance in their organelle proteomes and what mechanisms govern the ability of cells to respond to different proteotoxic stresses. Our goal is to identify new cellular factors, mechanisms and privileged chemical scaffolds that can guide development of new forms of therapies for diseases where perturbations of cellular proteostasis and protein misfolding and aggregation contributes to disease progression.

The main research foci of the group are

• Cellular factors mediating biogenesis of specific secreted or membrane proteins
• Mechanisms of action of small molecule natural products that modulate the secretory protein biogenesis
• Structural characterization of different secretory pathway components and their structural intermediates.

Ville Paavilainen, PhD, Docent 
Research Director
Institute of Biotechnology, HiLIFE 

Biocenter 3 (room 2315)
P.O. Box 65 (Viikinkaari 1) 
00014 University of Helsinki 
Finland 

Phone: +358 2 941 58969 
Email: ville.paavilainen@helsinki.fi  

Ville is a Principal Investigator/Research Director at BI.