Tao Che

Tao Che, PhD, holds a primary appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at Washington University School of Medicine and an adjunct appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical and Administrative Sciences at the College. Che received his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees from Wuhan University in China.  He completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.  After graduation, he did his postdoctoral research in the lab of Dr. Bryan Roth at University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, where he was interested in how drugs interact with their targets and then elicit both desirable and undesirable effects.  In particular, he focused on the opiate drugs and opioid receptors, determining the first active-state structure of kappa opioid receptor and uncovering the potential mechanisms for ligand selectivity and functional selectivity.