Draft:David Scott Lawrence

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David S. Lawrence
David S. Lawrence
Alma mater	East Los Angeles College (AA) University of California at Irvine (BS - Biological Science) University of California at Los Angeles (PhD - Chemistry)
Scientific career
Fields	Chemical Biology
Doctoral advisor	Robert V. Stevens
Other academic advisors	Harold. W. Moore, E. Thomas Kaiser

David Scott Lawrence is an American chemical biologist and academic. He is the Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on chemical biology, including biomimetic self-assembling systems, molecular probes of signaling pathways, photoactivatable biomolecules, and laboratory safety education.

Early Life and Family

Lawrence was born in Washington Heights, Manhattan on December 14, 1954. His family moved to southern California when he was 4 years old. He graduated in 1972 from Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra Califorinia. Lawrence is the first cousin, once removed, of the endocrinologist and medical researcher David Kipnis, the mime Claude Kipnis, and the fashion editor Marilyn Kirschner.

Education and Career

Lawrence earned degrees from East Los Angeles College (AA), the University of California, Irvine (BS), and the University of California, Los Angeles (PhD). He subsequently completed postdoctoral training as a National Institutes of Health fellow at the Rockefeller University in New York City.

Lawrence began his academic career at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1985, later joining the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, before moving to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 as the Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor. He holds affiliated appointments across multiple schools at UNC and chaired the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy from 2011 to 2025.

Research

Lawrence’s research in chemical biology has focused on the design of synthetic systems that emulate or control biological processes. His work intersects key areas of supramolecular chemistry, cellular signaling, and targeted drug delivery.

Self-assembling biomimetic systems

Early in his career, Lawrence developed synthetic molecules that were designed, upon self-assembly, to mimic biological systems. His work on rotaxanes is notable as an early example of controlled molecular assembly. Related efforts described the self-assembly of multi-component systems that exhibit features associated with hemoglobin and the cytochrome P-450 family of proteins.

Subsequent studies on supramolecular complexes in his laboratory contributed to ongoing efforts to reproduce structural and functional properties of biological macromolecules, as noted in a highly cited review.

Probes of protein kinase and protein phosphatase specificity

Lawrence’s work on enzyme selectivity has been situated within broader scientific efforts to understand and target signaling pathways implicated in disease. He reported the design of peptide-based inhibitors that target the large protein kinase enzyme family, which has been implicated in a variety of diseases. He also developed fluorescent probes for protein kinases as part of expanding the chemical tools for studying intracellular processes driven by these enzymes.

In collaboration with Zhong-Yin Zhang and Steven Almo, Lawrence contributed to studies identifying a secondary binding site in protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B, an approach that has been used as a strategy for improving inhibitor selectivity in enzymes with conserved active sites.

Chemical cytometry

In a two decade-long collaboration with Nancy L. Allbritton, Lawrence contributed to the development of chemical cytometry methods, which have been used to measure biochemical activity in individual single cells, enabling the analysis of cellular heterogeneity in biological systems.

Light-controlled protein activity

Lawrence has developed chemical and genetic methods for controlling protein activity using light. The chemical strategy is notable for “the ability to turn [signaling] pathways on and off noninvasively (which) could boost efforts to understand these processes”. The genetic approach is part of the broader field of optogenetics, which enables the light-activated protein to be genetically encoded. Expression of the protein and targeted illumination provides precise spatial and temporal control of biological processes and has been widely adopted as a tool for studying cellular signaling.

Phototherapeutics and drug delivery

Lawrence and collaborators developed light-activated drug delivery strategies in which therapeutic agents are encapsulated within red blood cells and released at targeted sites upon illumination. The technology has been described as a breakthrough with implications for targeted drug delivery by reducing required drug dosage and thereby alleviating untoward side effects. In addition, the technology addresses longstanding challenges in achieving controlled delivery of protein therapeutics to diseased sites. Finally, the tunable temporal and spatial control inherent in the technology affords novel opportunities for cell-based therapies. These and related approaches have been reviewed as part of the development of phototherapeutics toward clinical translation. Related institutional coverage has described applications in experimental models of inflammatory disease and arthritis.

Laboratory safety and education

Lawrence has contributed to laboratory safety education through the development of case-based instructional materials, an approach adopted by the American Chemical Society in an online training course. His work in developing virtual reality-based training experiences has been used to improve laboratory safety training by simulating research environments.

Department of Defense funding dispute

In the early 1990s, policies restricting military recruitment access on State University of New York campuses led to a dispute involving Department of Defense research funding. Contemporaneous reporting described how such policies affected research grants, including breast cancer funding administered by the Department of Defense.

Lawrence was among the researchers affected by the situation. Subsequent reporting indicated that the issue was resolved following an agreement permitting recruiter access, allowing affected research funding to be maintained.

Professional affiliations

Lawrence is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served on the editorial boards of Accounts of Chemical Research and Current Organic Synthesis, on the boards of various scientific societies, and on National Institutes of Health study sections.