The Gavathiotis laboratory investigates structural and mechanistic insights of BCL-2 family proteins and other key proteins in cell death and cell survival pathways such as apoptosis, mitochondrial dynamics, selective autophagy and oncogenic signaling. We harness these mechanistic insights to develop first-in-class small molecules that can be used for target identification and validation and serve as the basis for novel therapeutics. Our work in these pathways has pioneered structural and mechanistic insights, pharmacological strategies and first-in-class small molecules targeting challenging and “undruggable” targets.