Dr. GPCR Podcast

About Dr. GPCR Podcast

We bring you closer to dedicated scientists who work tirelessly to help understand GPCR pathophysiology.

Publisher

Dr. Yamina Berchiche

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

12 May 2020

Latest episode

9 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

232 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   9 Sept 2026

   Building GPCR Assays That Reflect Real Biology

   The biggest signal is not the same as the truest one. Jane Lamerdin and Gaurav Agrawal of Eurofins DiscoverX on what actually makes a GPCR assay trustworthy. Overexpress a receptor and you get a big, convenient readout that drifts away from what happens in a living cell. Across nearly three decades of building cell-based assays, Lamerdin and Agrawal have learned that physiological relevance, not raw expression, is the real benchmark, and increasingly it is what regulators expect too. This conversation moves from the company's roots in cyclic AMP and arrestin biology to the receptors that refuse to yield an assay, the long road from a discovery screen to potency and lot release, and why the obesity drug wave brought the largest target class back to the front of drug discovery. What you will take away: Why physiological relevance beats maximal expression, and how that raises the technical bar What it takes to move one assay from discovery all the way to potency and lot release Why some GPCRs, from adhesion receptors to orphans stuck in the ER, refuse to cooperate How decades of documented failures keep a portfolio from reinventing dead ends Why obesity and GLP-1 biology put GPCRs back at the center of drug discovery Dr. GPCR Ecosystem: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/ (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/) Eurofins DiscoverX: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/eurofins-discoverx (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/eurofins-discoverx)Membership and Pricing: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/university-pricing (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/university-pricing)

2. 

   26 Aug 2026

   He Left Stanford to Decode Adhesion GPCRs - Antony Boucard

   Adhesion GPCRs are the largest receptors in the human genome — and until recently, no one was certain they coupled to G proteins at all. Boucard is working to change that, one synapse at a time. Antony Boucard didn't plan to be a scientist. He was heading toward medical school — fresh from social work in Nicaragua, where he built wood-burning ovens for women's cooperatives, and years of service in the Canadian Navy Reserve — when a summer in a biochemistry lab changed his trajectory entirely. He turned down his medical school acceptance and never looked back. After graduate training at the Université de Sherbrooke, a postdoctoral fellowship in Thomas Südhof's Nobel Prize-winning lab (first at UT Southwestern in Dallas, then at Stanford) opened a new research direction: the molecular code governing synapse formation. A chance experiment — testing whether a cell adhesion molecule he was studying might bind to a GPCR — yielded a result that Südhof himself didn't believe at first. Both proteins, it turned out, were independently known to bind alpha-latrotoxin, the toxin from black widow spider venom. No one had thought to ask whether they interacted with each other. That question has defined Boucard's lab ever since. Now at UNAM in Mexico City — where no lab was working on adhesion GPCRs when he arrived — he is building a research program that connects these colossal, largely orphan receptors to synapse specificity, addiction, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and cancer. The conversation covers the science, the serendipitous path behind it, and what it looks like to pioneer a research field in a place no one expected. Why adhesion GPCRs are structurally unlike any other GPCR family — sprawling N-terminal domains, autoproteolytic processing, up to 1,000 amino acids — and what made them so difficult to work with for so long How alpha-latrotoxin from black widow spider venom became the unexpected clue connecting a cell adhesion molecule and a GPCR into the same intercellular complex What synapse formation reveals about adhesion GPCR function — and how addiction, autism, schizophrenia, and cancer all converge on the same receptor biology Why Boucard left Stanford and UT Southwestern to build a lab at UNAM, and what it means to recruit from scientific communities that larger institutions overlook The assays the lab uses to probe adhesion GPCR biology: BRET, FRET, microscopy, flow cytometry, and custom protein engineering strategies to solubilize membrane-anchored ligands The dream tool he can't build yet — a nanoscale real-time camera navigating the cell surface — and why cryo-EM snapshots still miss the most important part Dr. GPCR Ecosystem: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/ (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/) Membership & Pricing: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/university-pricing (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/university-pricing) Weekly News: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/gpcr-weekly-news (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/gpcr-weekly-news)

3. 

   12 Aug 2026

   The GPCR Nobody Has Learned to Drug Yet — Schulte

   Frizzled receptors look like GPCRs — but the field is split on whether they actually are. Gunnar Schulte has spent 25 years building the case, one receptor at a time. Schulte is a professor at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where his lab investigates Wnt–frizzled signaling at the molecular level. His research maps G-protein coupling specificity across all 10 frizzled subtypes, develops conformational biosensors to detect receptor activation, and searches for small molecules that could finally make frizzled receptors pharmacologically tractable. In this conversation, he walks through the evidence — what the conformational data show, why the Wnt ligand problem has stalled the field for decades, and how a compound originally designed for Smoothened became the closest thing frizzled pharmacology has to a starting point. Why each frizzled subtype couples to a different G protein — and why that distinction changes how the field should think about targeting them Why 19 Wnt ligands remain almost impossible to work with, and what the lipid modification problem costs drug discovery How SAG1.3, a Smoothened agonist, became the first small molecule to activate frizzled 6 as a partial agonist What conformational sensors reveal about frizzled activation — and why Schulte considers this his strongest argument for their GPCR identity How disheveled and G proteins may compete for receptor access through conformational selection Dr. GPCR Ecosystem: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/ (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/) Membership & Pricing: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/university-pricing (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/university-pricing) Weekly News: https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/gpcr-weekly-news (https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/gpcr-weekly-news)

Who has been a guest on Dr. GPCR Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Alessandro Nicoli
• Dr Alex Serafini
• Dr Sokhom Pin
• Dr Maria Majellaro
• Tom Sakmar

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

42,577

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

12 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

11 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 65 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

65

Social presence

0

YouTube

76

Engagement

85

Contact Dr. GPCR Podcast

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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