Julie Forman-Kay

Senior Scientist
Molecular Medicine

Co-Director
Structural & Biophysical Core Facility

Dr. Julie Forman-Kay received her B.Sc. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 and her PhD in molecular biophysics & biochemistry from Yale University under the supervision of Dr. Fred Richards in 1990. She completed post-doctoral studies at the Laboratory of Chemical Physics at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland in 1992, with Marius Clore and Angela Gronenborn. In 1992, she joined The Hospital for Sick Children and the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto.

The major focus of the Forman-Kay lab is to provide biological insights into how intrinsically disordered and highly dynamic protein states underly function and to develop methodological tools to enable better understanding of disordered states. Her expertise is in using and developing biochemical, NMR, other biophysical and computational tools to study intrinsically disordered proteins and their interactions underlying normal biology and disease. Most recently her lab has probed the biophysics of biomolecular phase separation and how it regulates cellular condensates and biological function. The Forman-Kay lab works on a number of projects of specific relevance to cystic fibrosis, cancer and neurobiology. 

Education and experience

• 2026–Present: Co-Founder and Co-Lead, Toronto Condensate Network, University of Toronto and SickKids Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2015–Present: Founder and Co-Director, Structural & Biophysical Core Facility, SickKids Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2015–2025: Program Head, Molecular Medicine Program, SickKids Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2002–Present: Professor (cross-appointment), Biochemistry Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 1999–Present: Senior Scientist, Molecular Medicine Program (formerly Molecular Structure & Function Program, formerly Structural Biology & Biochemistry Program), SickKids Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 1997–2002: Associate Professor (cross-appointment), Biochemistry Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 1992–1997: Assistant Professor (cross-appointment), Biochemistry Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 1992–1999: Scientist, Biochemistry Research Division, SickKids Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 1990–1992: Post-doctoral Fellowship, Laboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institutes of Health, NIDDK, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Dr. G. Marius Clore & Dr. Angela Gronenborn, supervisors
• 1981–1985: B.Sc. in Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Dr. Lee Gehrke, Dr. Robert Langer, Dr. Greg Petsko, supervisors
• 1985–1990: PhD, Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Dr. Fred Richards, supervisor

Research

Structural and biophysical studies of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDRs), which play critical biological roles, lag far behind studies of folded proteins. This is true even though 60% of human proteins have significant IDRs, disease-associated proteins are enriched in IDRs and many disease mutations fall within IDRs.

A major focus of Dr. Forman-Kay's work has been to bridge this gap. With her team, she has characterized highly dynamic complexes of disordered proteins, changing the understanding of mechanisms of regulatory protein interactions. Importantly, they have characterized the phase separation of disordered protein regions, helping to develop the field of biomolecular condensates that links biophysics and cell biology. This includes the study of effects of post-translational modification on phase behavior, the development of in vitro reconstituted systems within phase-separated states to study how phase separation regulates biology and its implications for disease, and novel NMR analyses together with Lewis Kay. Computational structural methodology work on IDPs with Teresa Head-Gordon includes the AlphaFlex project, which defines 100-conformer ensembles for the human proteome containing intrinsically disordered regions (accessible through UniProt) and addresses the misrepresentation of disordered regions by AlphaFold. Together with Alan Moses, Dr. Forman-Kay has developed tools for evolutionary and functional bioinformatic analysis of disordered regions to understand mechanisms of biology and disease. In addition, they have probed small molecule interactions with proteins to define mechanism of action for therapeutic compounds and have analyzed disease variants for insights into mechanisms of pathology.

Achievements

• 2023: Elected Fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance
• 2021: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS)
• 2016–2030: Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins
• 2016: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC)
• 2013–2014: Zellers Senior Scientist Award recognizing the outstanding contributions of an established Cystic-Fibrosis Canada-funded investigator
• 2012: CSMB Jeanne Manery Fisher Memorial Lectureship (awarded at the 2013 CSMB Annual Meeting)