Drew Adams CV

​Drew Adams, Ph.D.
Postdoc, Chemical Biology Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
​PhD, Organic Chemistry Harvard University
BA, Biochemistry, Highest Honors Swarthmore College

Drew graduated from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Biochemistry and obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Harvard University (Prof. David A. Evans), where his work focused on the total synthesis of alkaloid natural products. He then undertook postdoctoral studies with Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT within the Center for the Science of Therapeutics. There he used high-throughput screening and chemical biology techniques to identify drug candidates that modulated cancer cell stress phenotypes and to elucidate these molecules' cellular mechanisms-of-action.  

Drew joined the Genetics Department at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 2015 as an Assistant Professor and became Founding Director of the Small-Molecule Drug Development Shared Resource.  In 2017 he became Co-Founder of Convelo Therapeutics and was appointed at CWRU as the Thomas F. Peterson, Jr. Professor of Novel Therapeutics.  In 2018 Drew published his landmark study in Nature and received the J. Bruce Jackson, Jr. Award for Undergraduate Mentoring, one of two given University-wide at CWRU.  In 2019 he joined Convelo formally as Vice President of Discovery to help navigate Convelo’s research collaboration with Genentech, and he was also awarded the American Society for Neurochemistry’s Folch-Pi Prize honoring one outstanding junior investigator in neurochemistry.  In 2020 Drew was promoted at Convelo to Project Team Co-Lead, where he led scientific communications with Genentech as well as Convelo’s 15 scientists.  In 2021 Drew was promoted at CWRU to Associate Professor with tenure. 

​Research in the Adams Lab has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, numerous foundations (the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Mallinckrodt Foundation, the Dr. Ralph and Marian Falk Medical Research Trust, the Harrington Discovery Institute, and the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation), and benefactors like the late Thomas F. Peterson, Jr.