Chemical biology & drug discovery

Decoding lipid signaling for precision drug discovery.

Lipids don’t just form cell membranes—they orchestrate critical cellular decisions.

The Cho Lab at UIC translates fundamental insights into lipid dynamics and signaling into groundbreaking, targeted therapeutics for hard-to-treat cancers and neurodegenerative diseases.

Our research Join the lab

Illustration of a cell membrane bilayer with peripheral and integral proteins engaging its lipids

Fluorescence micrograph of punctate lipid-sensor signal in cyan, green and blue

Stained cells imaged by light microscopy

Title slide of the 2026 BPS Award lecture, 'From Mechanistic Elucidation of Lipid-Protein Interaction to Breakthrough Drug Discovery'

Group news

Recent recognition

2026 · Award

Wonhwa Cho receives the Biophysical Society's 2026 Award in the Biophysics of Health and Disease

Watch the award lecture · Read the announcement

Publications

Four decades of innovation: from interfacial enzymology to first-in-class therapeutics.

Explore over 200 papers spanning four decades of discoveries in membrane biophysics, interfacial enzymology, lipid–protein interactions and targeted therapeutics.

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