Michelle Arkin, PhD, professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the UCSF School of Pharmacy, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most influential learned societies.

Founded in 1780, the academy was established to convene leaders across disciplines to advance knowledge and address challenges facing society. Its membership has spanned generations of thinkers whose ideas have shaped science, policy, and culture, from Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Toni Morrison. Election recognizes achievement within a field as well as efforts to produce reflective, independent, and pragmatic studies that inform public policy and advance the public good.

Arkin’s career exemplifies this broader impact. Over the past two decades, she has helped redefine what is possible in drug discovery by tackling a fundamental limitation: many of the proteins that drive disease were long considered beyond the reach of medicines. These “undruggable” targets — often involved in complex protein–protein interactions — resisted conventional approaches, leaving major gaps between biological insight and therapeutic progress.
 

New small molecule strategies
 

Through her research, Arkin has helped shift that boundary. By developing new strategies to identify and design small molecules that can modulate these difficult targets, her work has moved parts of the field from theoretical possibility to practical application. In doing so, she has contributed to a growing toolkit that allows scientists to engage with diseases at a deeper, more precise level.

“Michelle’s election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences reflects the profound impact of her work on how we approach drug discovery,” said Kathy Giacomini, PhD, BSPharm, dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy. “She has helped expand the boundaries of what we consider druggable, opening new directions for research and, ultimately, new possibilities for patients. Her influence extends well beyond her own lab to the broader scientific community.”

Arkin’s recognition highlights a pivotal moment in biomedical science: Advances in genomics and disease biology have identified thousands of potential drug targets, yet many remain difficult to translate into therapies. Bridging the gap between knowing what drives disease and knowing how to intervene has become one of the field’s central challenges.

“I am tremendously honored to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and deeply grateful to my nominators. Our society faces such important challenges, including the need to create new medicines faster, with greater precision, and for more diseases,” Arkin said. “Here, we can see the impact of chemical biology, a discipline that develops new molecules to perturb biology.  Chemical biologists not only learn how diseases work, but we can advance innovative molecules and mechanisms toward development of new-to-the-world medicines.”

Impact beyond the lab

Arkin’s work offers both conceptual frameworks and practical methods for engaging previously inaccessible biology. At UCSF, she serves as executive director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center, where she leads collaborative teams of chemistry and biology experts to discover new drug candidates. She is also vice dean for research technology and entrepreneurship, a role that reflects her commitment to moving scientific insights toward real-world impact.

Her lab develops chemical probes, or specialized molecules that allow researchers to observe and manipulate protein function inside cells. Such tools deepen understanding of how diseases operate and provide starting points for the development of new therapies. By combining high-throughput screening, fragment-based discovery, and advanced imaging, her team studies diseases ranging from cancer to neurodegenerative and infectious conditions.

Beyond her research contributions, Arkin is a founding member and past president of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, an organization dedicated to fostering collaboration and advancing education across the global research community. Through mentorship, collaboration, and leadership, she has helped influence how drug discovery is practiced and taught.

Arkin will be formally inducted during the Academy’s Induction Weekend, to be held October 9–11, 2026, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was also recently inducted into the into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)’s College of Fellows — one of the highest professional honors in the field.