Kwaku Kyei-Baffour

Kwaku Kyei-Baffour, Ph.D.

Kwaku Kyei-Baffour

Kwaku Kyei-Baffour is a research scientist in the Center for the Development of Therapeutics (CDoT) and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, working under the direction of Michel Weïwer. He leads medicinal chemistry efforts to develop small molecules towards the treatment of severe psychiatric diseases such as bipolar disorder.

Kyei-Baffour came to the Broad Institute in March 2021 after completing his postdoctoral fellowship in Craig Lindsley’s lab at Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, where he worked on developing novel positive allosteric modulators for the metabotropic glutamate receptor mGluR1.

Kyei-Baffour earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Purdue University. His graduate work in Mingji Dai's lab focused on the discovery, optimization, and investigation of the antimicrobial activity of a unique, and unexploited class of aryl isonitriles. While at Purdue, Kyei-Baffour also completed the total synthesis of 17-nor-Excelsinidine (a natural product with anti-HSV and anti-adenoviral activities). He also holds a M.S in chemistry from Youngstown State University and B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Ghana

November 2022