Chris Overall
Professor Christopher Overall is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Protease Proteomics and Systems Biology and a Senior Fellow of the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, Germany (2010–2013), where he is now an Honorary Professor. He was inducted as a fellow into the Royal Society of Canada in 2018. Chris is best known for developing proteomic methodology for discovering protease substrates in vivo, thereby establishing the field of degradomics. By generating clinically relevant insights into how proteases dampen disease-fighting defence systems involved in chemokine and complement regulation of macrophages and neutrophils in inflammation, viral host resistance, and immunodeficiency degradomics has revealed a new layer of complexity in the hierarchy of cell and immune signalling regulation, revolutionizing our understanding of protease function and drug targeting. These insights led to developing a new class of molecular correctors to treat MALT-1 protease deficiency and NF-kB activation in immunodeficiency disease. During the pandemic, Chris pivoted his laboratory to the investigation of SARS-CoV-2 proteases, revealing their drastic impact on cleaving hundreds of host cell proteins in critical pathways that collectively promote the cellular takeover by the virus.
Dr. Overall completed his undergraduate and Master’s degrees at the University of Adelaide, South Australia; his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, Canada; and was an MRC Centennial Fellow in his postdoctoral work with Dr. Michael Smith, Nobel Laureate, UBC. He was a Senior Scientist at British Biotech, Oxford, and at the Protease Platform, Centre for Proteomic Drug Discovery, Novartis, Basel. His papers are influential, with an h-index of 102, and his advances in proteomics have been recognized by the Canadian National Proteomics Network Tony Pawson Award (2014); the Proteomass Scientific Society Award (2017); the 2018 international HUPO Discovery Award in Proteomics Sciences; and the 2022 Helmut Holzer Award. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Proteome Research and Chairs the HUPO Chromosome-centric Human Proteome Project (C-HPP).
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