Sang-Ah Kim, Ph.D.

Sang-Ah is an associate in the Litigation Department, and a member of the Life Sciences Patent practice. Her primary focus is in the area of intellectual property, where she works with life sciences clients of all sizes in the preparation and prosecution of patent applications.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Sang-Ah was a post-doctoral fellow at the Pennsylvania State University, where she studied epigenetics and eukaryotic gene regulation. In particular, she characterized how chromatin factors interact with nucleosomes for their downstream functions in cellular processes and implications in diseases, using biophysical, biochemical and structural biology techniques.

During her Ph.D. studies, Sang-Ah revealed key mechanistic insights into how a critical cancer-related enzyme called a demethylase functions to control gene regulation using highly specialized biochemical experiments. In her follow-up work using X-ray crystallography, she solved a structure of the demethylase on its physical substrate, the nucleosome, providing the basis for targeted drug discovery of anti-cancer drugs directed against the demethylase enzyme. As an undergraduate at Clark University, her research focused on the biophysics of misfolding and self-assembly of amyloid beta protein involved in Alzheimer’s disease. In addition to conducting scientific research, Sang-Ah was also involved in an innovation and entrepreneurship project and co-found an alcohol-infused frozen yogurt company.