Dr. John Hanna is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He obtained his undergraduate degree at Stanford in 2001 and his PhD (2006) and MD (2009) degrees at Harvard. His laboratory studies the basic mechanisms of protein degradation by the proteasome, which is the large molecular machine that destroys proteins and which is a well-established drug target for multiple myeloma. His lab’s discovery of the inhibitory mechanism of PI31, an endogenous protein that inhibits proteasomes, solved a 30-year mystery in the field and suggested a new rational approach to develop proteasome inhibitors. Working with BWH’s Ignite Program, Dr. Hanna has developed a series of potent and specific proteasome inhibitors that operate differently from established drugs, and which are highly effective in killing multiple myeloma cells in culture. These new inhibitors have the potential to supplant current drugs and to expand the use of proteasome inhibitors into new oncologic applications.