resentations by Evie Cai and Stephen Wang
Evie Cai
“Gender Discrimination in Health Care: A Milestone in Health Care Civil Rights”
Until the recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, insurance compaines in the United States were able to charge men and women different insurance premiums, ceteris paribus, on the basis of sex. While overt discrimination based on gender has been banned, this presentation will investigate the possibility of a disparate impact claim against employer-sponsored insurance plans and discuss the possible legal implications of such claim.
Stephen Wang
“PROTACs and Implications for the Design of Therapeutic Small-Molecule Compounds”
The most common class of pharmaceutical agents are small-molecule compounds that work through blocking the function of disease-causing proteins inside cells. PROTACs are a new sub-class of small-molecule compounds that help degrade these disease-associated proteins entirely. In this talk, Stephen will present a synopsis of the work he has done over the last two years in the Crews lab in identifying the atomic differences that allow for the highly-specific degradation of proteins by PROTACs.