Jennifer Cochran

Jennifer R. Cochran, PhD, Professor, Departments of Bioengineering, and (by courtesy) Chemical Engineering, Stanford University School of Engineering, Shriram Chair of Bioengineering 

Research Description: Dr. Cochran’s laboratory uses interdisciplinary approaches in chemistry, biology, and engineering to develop novel peptides and proteins that can be used as research tools or as therapeutic candidates for treating human disease. True to the spirit and culture of Stanford, her group is highly collaborative across multiple departments and schools both within and outside the university and hospital. Several of the engineered proteins from her lab are undergoing further clinical/translational development through collaborations with clinicians and physician-scientists in the Stanford School of Medicine. While Dr. Cochran is an established researcher, she is new to diabetes research. She was awarded a Pilot and Feasibility Grant from SDRC to develop novel agonists of the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) with improved potency and unique pharmacological properties that will be used as research tools and as potential therapeutic candidates. This grant presented an exciting opportunity for her group to bring tools and technologies to the field and establish new collaborations in diabetes research, precisely aligned with the mission of SDRC.

Selected relevant publications (SDRC Members in BOLD): 

  1. Longwell CK, Hanna S, Hartrampf N, Sperberg RAP, Huang PS, Pentelute BL, Cochran JR. Identification of N-Terminally Diversified GLP-1R Agonists Using Saturation Mutagenesis and Chemical Design. ACS Chem Biol. 2021 Jan 15;16(1):58-66. doi: 10.1021/acschembio.0c00722. PMID: 33307682. 

  2. Steele AN, Paulsen MJ, Wang H, Stapleton LM, Lucian HJ, Eskandari A, Hironaka CE, Farry JM, Baker SW, Thakore AD, Jaatinen KJ, Tada Y, Hollander MJ, Williams KM, Seymour AJ, Totherow KP, Yu AC, Cochran JR, Appel EA, Woo YJ. Multi-phase catheter-injectable hydrogel enables dual-stage protein-engineered cytokine release to mitigate adverse left ventricular remodeling following myocardial infarction in a small animal model and a large animal model. Cytokine. 2020 Mar;127:154974. doi: 10.1016/j.cyto.2019.154974. PMID: 31978642. 

  3. Mitchell AC, Alford SC, Hunter SA, Kannan D, Parra Sperberg RA, Chang CH, Cochran JR. Development of a Protease Biosensor Based on a Dimerization-Dependent Red Fluorescent Protein. ACS Chem Biol. 2018 Jan 19;13(1):66-72. doi: 10.1021/acschembio.7b00715. Epub 2017 Dec 12. PMID: 29125730; PMCID: PMC6453536. 

  4. Longwell CK, Labanieh L, Cochran JR. High-throughput screening technologies for enzyme engineering. Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2017 Dec;48:196-202. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2017.05.012. Epub 2017 Jun 15. PMID: 28624724.