Katherine Donovan

Katherine Donovan holds the position of Lead Scientist and Managing Director of Fischer labs within the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School. Her doctoral research was conducted under Prof. Renwick Dobson at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, with a focus on protein biochemistry and structural biology. Katherine’s postdoctoral work began in 2016 in Prof. Eric Fischer’s lab, where she cultivated a keen interest in proteomics – a technique she uses to measure protein expression changes in response to various stimuli. She established and managed proteomics groups within both Fischer Lab and the Center for Protein Degradation, specializing in degrader screening and target identification. Her work has been pivotal in detecting the degradation targets of several molecules, notably uncovering SALL4 as the potential key to thalidomide’s teratogenic effects. Katherine has co-headed extensive projects to delineate the degradable kinome and HDACome, and has launched a public degradation proteomics initiative to offer complimentary degrader target mapping to the scientific community. Her notable contributions to targeted protein degradation (TPD) research were honored with the Arvinas TPD Early Career Researcher Award in 2022. Presently, she supervises and actively contributes to various projects in ligase biology and protein degradation while managing the Fischer lab and TPD proteomics operations under the Chemical Biology Program.