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Award & Prize Lectures
Dr. Cravatt is a Professor and the Norton B. Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute. His research group is interested in developing chemical proteomic technologies that enable protein and drug discovery on a global scale and applying these methods to characterize proteins that play important roles in human physiology and disease. Dr. Cravatt is a co-founder of Activx Biosciences, Abide Therapeutics, and Vividion Therapeutics. His honors include a Searle Scholar Award, the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, a Cope Scholar Award, the ASBMB Merck Award, and memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and National Academy of Sciences.
Close window PROUS INSTITUTE-OVERTON AND MEYER AWARD
FOR NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN DRUG DISCOVERY
Christa E. Müller completed her PhD studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany, in the field of Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry in 1988 followed by a postdoctoral stay at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. After her return to Tübingen she completed her habilitation (post-doctorate degree) and became Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Würzburg, Germany, in 1994. Since 1998 she holds a Full Professorship at the University of Bonn, Germany. From 2001-2004 and from 2010-2015 she served as a Vice-Rector of Bonn University. Prof. Müller is Associate Editor for MedChemComm (Royal Society of Chemistry) and a member of several Scientific and Editorial Boards. She has published about 400 scientific papers and received a number of awards for her work. Her main interest is in medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology of purine binding membrane proteins (adenosine receptors, P2 purine receptors, adenine receptors and ecto-nucleotidases) as well as lipid-activated and orphan G protein-coupled receptors.
Close window NAUTA AWARD FOR PHARMACOCHEMISTRY
Adam Nelson is Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Leeds. He was Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at Leeds (2009-11) and has been awarded the RSC Meldola medal (2001), the Pfizer academic award (2002), an AstraZeneca award in Organic Chemistry (2005), the RSC Corday-Morgan medal (2007). His leads a highly collaborative research programme applies synthetic chemistry approaches to a wide range of biological problems. He currently holds an EPSRC Established Career Fellowship (2016-2021) that focuses on the realisation of an autonomous approach to functional small molecule discovery; and leads the Chemistry theme within the UK’s Rosalind Franklin Institute (2017-19). He will be presented with the 2018 UCB-Ehrlich award at EFMC-ISMC.”
Close window UCB-EHRLICH AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY Plenary Lectures
Dr. Ardigò is the head of the Rare Diseases Unit in the Research and Development department of Chiesi Farmaceutici S.p.A. (Italy). He is an MD (with specialization in Internal Medicine) and obtained a PhD at the University of Parma (Italy) and a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University (California, US). He is author of more than 45 indexed papers. He joined Chiesi in 2010, where acted as Clinical Lead in the registration of the first stem cell therapy in EU and led the cross-company team (with uniQure BV) treating the first patient with a commercial gene therapy in EU. He is chairman of the Therapies Scientific Committee of IRDiRC (International Rare Diseases Research Consortium).
Close window The Therapeutic Challenge of the New Era: Developing and Making Available Life Changing Treatment to Patients with Rare Diseases
Tatjana Avšič is a full Professor of Medical Microbiology at Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana and Head of the Laboratory for diagnostics of zoonoses at the Institute of Microbiology and Immunology, Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has over 35 years of experiences in the clinical diagnostics and research of zoonotic vector-borne diseases, mainly arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHF) represented in more than 185 SCI publications. She is head of the laboratory that has the role of reference center at the national and international level. Her laboratory conducts research on genetic variability of arboviruses with the relation to their host-vector-man relationship. Over the past 25 years she was the principal investigator on numerous national and international research projects. Due to her scientific achievements she has been elected as a full member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in June 2015.
Close window Zika Virus: An Old Virus with a New Face
Ben Davis got his B.A. (1993) and D.Phil. (1996) from the University of Oxford. During this time he learnt the beauty of carbohydrate chemistry under the supervision of Professor George Fleet. He then spent 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Bryan Jones at the University of Toronto, exploring protein chemistry and biocatalysis.
In 1998 he returned to the U.K. to take up a lectureship at the University of Durham. In the autumn of 2001 he moved to the Dyson Perrins Laboratory, University of Oxford and received a fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford. He was promoted to Full Professor in 2005. His group's research centres on the chemical understanding and exploitation of biomolecular function (Synthetic Biology, Chemical Biology and Chemical Medicine), with an emphasis on carbohydrates and proteins. In particular, the group's interests encompass synthesis and methodology; target biomolecule synthesis; inhibitor/probe/substrate design; biocatalysis; enzyme & biomolecule mechanism; biosynthetic pathway determination; protein engineering; drug delivery; molecular biology; structural biology; cell biology; glycobiology; molecular imaging and in vivo biology. Close window Sugars & Proteins: Glycomimetics to Target Infectious Disease
Bayard Huck received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison working under the tutelage of Professor Samuel H. Gellman. Over the next decade Bayard constantly sought to expand his Medicinal Chemistry expertise while working on targets ranging from GPCRs to kinases, and therapeutic areas that span from obesity to oncology. After a sojourn into the development world as a Program Leader responsible for leading early development clinical teams, Bayard returned to his Medicinal Chemistry roots where he is currently the Global Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Merck.
Close window It’s a Small-Molecule World: Medicinal Chemistry Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Decade
Cristina Nevado graduated in chemistry at the Autónoma University of Madrid in 2000. In October 2004 she received her PhD in organic chemistry from the same University working with Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren in late transition metal catalyzed reactions. After a post-doctoral stay in the group of Prof. Alois Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Germany), she joined the University of Zürich as an Assistant Professor in May 2007. In 2011, Cristina was awarded the Chemical Society Reviews Emerging Investigator Award and the Thieme Chemistry Journal Award in recognition of her contributions in the field of synthetic organic chemistry. In 2012 she received an ERC Junior Investigator grant and has been awarded the Werner Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society. In 2013 she became Full Professor at the Organic Chemistry Institute of the University of Zürich. Rooted in the wide area of organic chemistry, her research program is focused on complex chemical synthesis and new organometallic reactions.
Close window Smart Chemical Probes: from Bromodomain Ligands to Natural Products
Prof. Rübsamen-Schaeff, a chemist by training, started her career as Scientific and Executive Director of academic institution, the Chemotherapeutical Research Institute Georg-Speyer-Haus in Frankfurt with a focus on cancer research (tyrosine kinases) and HIV. In 1994, she joined Bayer as Head of Virological Research and later as SVP, heading Bayer´s whole Infectious Disease Discovery.
In 2006 she founded the company AiCuris and lead it as CEO from 2006 until 2015. AiCuris Anti-Infective Cures GmbH is a German Biopharma company dedicated to the research and development of drugs against infectious diseases (viruses and multi-resistant bacteria). The first drug from AiCuris´ pipeline (licensed to Merck in 2012) was approved by the FDA in 2017 for the prevention of cytomegalovirus infections in patients, who received stem cell transplants, followed by approvals in other legislations. Prof. Rübsamen-Schaeff presently is the Chair of AiCuris´Advisory Boad, a member of the Board of Partners of E. Merck KG and Chair of Merck´s Research Council as well as a member of the Supervisory Board of Merck KGaA and 4SC AG. She also serves in the Scientific Panel on Health (SPH) for the Framework Program Horizon 2020 of the EU. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Germany, Leopoldina. Close window Development of Non-Nucleosidic Compounds against DNA Viruses of the Herpes Group. The Era After Nucleosides: Letermovir and Pritelivir
Peter H. Seeberger studied chemistry in Erlangen (Germany) and completed a PhD in biochemistry in Boulder (USA). After performing research at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Research in New York he was Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry with tenure at MIT and Professor at ETH Zurich before assuming positions as Director at the MPI for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2009. His research in the glycosciences, vaccine development and continuous flow chemistry has been documented in 500 peer-reviewed journal articles, over 40 patents and more than 800 invited lectures. This work was recognized with more than 30 international awards. The research in the Seeberger laboratory has given rise to seven successful companies in the USA, Switzerland and Germany.
Close window Synthetic Glycoconjugate Vaccines against Bacterial Infections Invited Speakers
Andrea Ablasser studied Medicine at the University of Munich and received her M.D. in 2010. Her post-doctoral studies at the University of Bonn, GER, focused on deciphering molecular mechanisms of innate DNA sensing. Since 2014 Andrea Ablasser is heading a research group at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH.
Close window Intracellular DNA Sensing in Health and Disease
Dr Andreas Bender is a Reader for Molecular Informatics with the Centre for Molecular Science Informatics at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge, leading a group of about 22 postdocs, PhD and graduate students and academic visitors. In his work, Andreas is involved with the integration and analysis of chemical and biological data, aimed at understanding phenotypic compound action (such as cellular readouts, and also organism-level effects) on a mechanistic level, predicting molecular properties related to both compound effiacy and toxicity, as well as drug repurposing. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked in the Lead Discovery Informatics group at Novartis in Cambridge/MA as well as at Leiden University in the Netherlands before his current post. In 2013 he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant to model mixture effects of chemical structures in biological systems using mechanistic approaches, an area currently very little understood.
Close window Beyond Single-Target Activities: Using Polypharmacology and Systems Readouts for Compound Selection and Mode-of-Action Analysis
Dr Jonas Boström holds a Principal Scientist position in the CVMD iMED at AstraZeneca, Sweden. He obtained a M.S. in Chemistry at the University of Gothenburg in 1996 and a Ph.D. in Computational Medicinal Chemistry in 2000 at the Royal Danish School of Pharmacy, Copenhagen, Denmark. After a short spell at H. Lundbeck A/S he joined AstraZeneca. Current research interest includes combining new technology, informatics, and science in innovative ways to tackle the many challenging tasks in drug discovery. This covers quite a diverse range of topics; from analysis of past and present synthetic methods, deriving matched-pair SAR methods, developing disruptive and ultrafast virtual screening capabilities and new virtual reality platforms for drug designers to leading internal AI drug hunting initiatives. Jonas is also Associate Professor at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), and co-founder of EduChem VR, a start-up gamifying chemistry education using virtual reality.
Close window Stuck in a Rut with Old Chemistry
Dr. Bottegoni is a scientist and an entrepreneur. He holds a doctoral degree in pharmaceutical sciences (University of Bologna, Italy, 2006) and a master in healthcare management (SDA Bocconi, Italy, 2014). After a post-doc at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA - USA), he joined the Italian Institute of Technology (Genova, Italy) first as a post-doc and later as a team leader. In 2014, he co-founded BiKi Technologies, a start-up company that commercializes software solutions for computational medicinal chemistry and, for two years, was CEO of the company. He recently moved to the UK to join Heptares Therapeutics (Welwyn Garden City, UK). His scientific interests are in structure-based drug design and polypharmacology.
Close window In silico Polypolpharmacology
Cedric Boularan is currently a Research Investigator at InvivoGen in Toulouse (France). He obtained his PhD in Cochin Institute (Paris), moved to a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD) and then to Lifesearch, a biotech company. His research focused on in vitro and in vivo evaluation of mechanism regulating GPCR function for oncology, cardiology or immunology fields. His work has been published in major journals. He joined InvivoGen R&D department in 2015 to emphasize the preclinical proof of concept to use innate immune ligands (especially STING agonists) as immuno-modulator dedicated for oncology field.
Close window Use of Cyclic Dinucleotides (CDNs) to Induce Stimulator of Interferon Genes (STING)-Dependent Antitumor Immunity
Professor Christina Chai obtained her BSc (Hons) from the University of Canter-bury, Christchurch, New Zealand and her PhD from the Australian National University, Australia. Following her PhD, she completed a fellowship at University of Oxford, UK followed by Faculty positions in Victoria University of Wellington, NZ (1991-1993) and the Aus¬tralian National University (1994-2004). She joined the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences, Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR) as a Principal Sci¬entist and Programme Manager in 2005. In 2011, she returned to academia to join the Department of Pharmacy, National University of Singapore. She is currently the Head of the Department of Pharmacy since Jan 2016. Her research interests are broadly in the areas of natural products synthesis, biomimetic designs and medicinal chemistry.
Close window Towards the Development of Novel Inhibitors for Chikungunya Virus Infection: Approaches in Structure-Activity-Metabolism Relationship (SAMR) Studies
Phil Chamberlain obtained his BA and D.Phil. degrees from the University of Oxford before traveling to the U.S. to perform his post-doctoral work at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in San Diego. Phil joined Celgene, San Diego in 2007 and leads the Structural and Chemical Biology department which provides structural, biochemical and cellular data in support of drug discovery projects. Phil is known for his work in understanding and extending the action of cereblon modulators, and has published work in this area in journals including Nature and Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
Close window Targeting 'Undruggable' Transcription and Translation Factors for Degradation with Low Molecular Weight Cereblon Modulators
Steven is Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Drug Discovery at the University of Nottingham, where he is interested in all aspects of the quantitative assessment of ligand-receptor interactions. In particular he has expertise in the measurement and interpretation of the kinetics of ligand binding and signalling. Steven is also co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Excellerate Bioscience Ltd, a CRO providing specialist molecular pharmacology solutions to the drug discovery sector. Prior to these roles he spent 16 years in the pharmaceutical industry, both at SmithKline Beecham and Novartis. At Novartis he was Director of Molecular Pharmacology in Respiratory Diseases, leading an assay development and compound profiling team of 30 scientists providing expert opinion and support for GPCR, ion channel and enzyme projects. He has broad drug discovery experience, ranging from target validation through to leading full lead optimisation programmes to successful clinical proof of concept.
Close window "Micro-Pharmacokinetics”: How Local Drug Concentration Influences Observed Binding Kinetics
Fen’er Chen, academician of Chinese academy of engineering, an expert in fine organic chemical and raw materials. In 1985, he received his master's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry and his doctorate in organic chemistry from the school of pharmacy of west China medical university and Sichuan university. He is now a professor of chemistry department and doctoral supervisor of Fudan university in Shanghai, P. R. China. He has won the second prize of China National Invention Prize, the second prize of National Science And Technology Progress Award, the first prize of the Provincial Science And Technology Progress Award, and the Chinese Patent Gold Award. He has published more than 275 academic papers in the international academic journals. He has applied for 136 patents of inventions including China, the United States and the European Union. He has authorized 45 Chinese and foreign patents and 7 academic works. He is awarded the prize of Science And Technology Progress Award, National Excellent Science And Technology Worker, Shanghai Top Ten Science And Technology Elite, National Chemical Advanced Worker And Other Awards And Honors.
Close window Asymmetric Synthesis of Statin API as the Hypolipidemic Agents: The Evolution from the Chemical Kinetic Resolution to the Asymmetric Catalytic Technology (An Odessy)
Diane graduated from the University of Nottingham, B.Sc. (Hons) in Chemistry, and completed her PhD studies at the University of Exeter working with Professor Stanley Roberts. After two years as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with Professor Scott Denmark at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign she started her industrial career in the Pharmaceutical industry with the Wellcome Foundation. Diane has worked on a wide variety of respiratory and anti-inflammatory programmes involving both topical and oral administration. She currently heads the chemistry group in the Allergic Inflammation DPU and is a Programme Leader of a multidisciplinary drug discovery team.
Diane has received a number of special awards available within GSK including:
• Inventors Award as an inventor on the patent relating to Vilanterol, developed into the inhaled medicines Relvar, Anoro and Trelegy. • First time in Human Award awarded for contributions to the delivery of an intranasal TLR7 agonist which is currently under investigation in Phase 2 clinical studies. In 2017 she was successfully nominated as both a GSK Senior Fellow and as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Close window Modification of Cyclic Dinucleotides to Enhance Modulation of the Innate Immune Response
Dr. Elizabeth de Lange is Professor in Predictive Pharmacology at the Division of Systems Biomedicine and Pharmacology of the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR), Leiden (NL). Prof de lange has been trained as a Biophysical Chemist at the University of Groningen (NL), and obtained her PhD on “The use of microdialysis to study blood-brain barrier transport characteristics” at the LACDR.
Her research focusses on the prediction of human drug effects by translational pharmacokinetic -pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) model development on the basis of preclinical data, with particular emphasis on the Central Nervous System (CNS). Her research has a comparative and integrative design to elucidate conditional influences on individual mechanisms, and includes the cycle of simulations – predictions - experimental testing - data modeling – simulations etc. Experiments typically involve monitoring techniques in (freely moving) chronically instrumented animals, including microdialysis.
Close window Target Binding Kinetics and its Relevance in the in vivo Context
A/Prof Bernie Flynn is Founder and CEO of Cincera Therapeutics and Lab-Head in Synthetic Medicinal Chemistry at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science (MIPS). His research focusses on new approaches to bioactive discovery using designer libraries in phenotypic screening. In a current application of this approach, a library of non-lipid sphingolipid mimetics (drug-like molecules with affinity for different sphingolipid enzyme and receptor binding sites) has been generated and used to identify new drug targets and lead molecules for cancer, fibrosis and inflammation. A different library of small molecule DNA/RNA-binding fragments is also being developed and applied to the discovery of novel protein-DNA/RNA interfacial inhibitors to target aberrant gene expression. Earlier exemplars of this focussed library approach to drug discovery are currently undergoing clinical trials (Phase II) in cancer and in CNS-disorders.
Close window Unravelling the Mysteries of the Sphinx: Novel Targets and Small-Molecule Therapeutics from the Sphingolipid Synthesis and Signaling Pathway
Karl Gademann (1972) was educated at ETH Zürich and Harvard University, where he worked with Prof. Dieter Seebach, Prof. Eric N. Jacobsen, and Prof. Erick M. Carreira. His previous professorial appointments include the EPFL in Lausanne and the University of Basel, where he served as full professor and dean of research. He has been elected to the board of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, and is affiliated to the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering. In Summer 2015, Karl Gademann moved to the University of Zürich. His work has been recognized by a number of international awards, including the Latsis prize, the Novartis Early Career Award, the Ruzicka Medal, The Liebig Lecture by the German Chemical Society, and the European Young Investigator Award.
Close window Capturing Biological Activity in Natural Product Fragments by Chemical Synthesis
Tony Gee is Professor of PET and Radiochemistry in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences at King's College London.
A number of very active research projects are in progress including the development of rapid labelling synthetic techniques with short-lived positron-emitting radionuclides, small molecule-protein / small molecule-membrane interactions, the design of PET imaging probes, PET in Drug Discovery and Development and the understanding of in vivo pharmacology.
Close window PET Molecular Imaging – an Overview
Since 2015 Riccardo Giovannini is Director Medicinal Chemistry at Boehringer Ingelheim, Biberach, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 1998 at the University of Camerino (Italy); during the Ph.D. he worked one year at the University of Marburg under the supervision of Prof. Paul Knochel. At the end of 1998 he started his career in the pharmaceutical industry by joining the medicinal chemistry department at GlaxoWellcome Italia as junior research scientist; in 2001, after the merger between GlaxoWellcome and SmithKline Beecham, he was promoted research leader at GlaxoSmithKline Italia. In 2005 he joined Boehringer Ingelheim Italia as Group Leader at the Chemistry Research Centre and two years later he was appointed Department Head. In 2010 he took the responsibility as Managing Director of Boehringer Ingelheim Research Italia, a company focused on pre-clinical research; he kept this responsibility until 2014. His research has prevalently been devoted to the areas of neuroscience and inflammation, contributing together with his teams to the identification of several clinical candidates. Riccardo is co-author/co-inventor of over 70 publications, patents, posters and oral presentations.
Close window First Time Disclosure of BI 409306, a First in Class PDE9 Inhibitor for the Treatment of CNS Diseases
TITLE AND POSITION
Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Head of Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia RESEARCH INTEREST Drug discovery, medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry, in-silico drug design, virtual high-throughput screening, enzyme inhibitors, organic chemistry, molecular pharmacology EDUCATION AND FORMER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES - 1994 M.Sc. in Pharmacy - 1999 doctoral thesis in the field of Medicinal Chemistry - From December 2010 on: Full Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana - From. Oct. 2007 to Oct. 2011, Dean in the Faculty of Pharmacy, and member of the University of Ljubljana Senate - From 2011- Head of Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Close window Nonpeptidic Selective Inhibitors of Immunoproteasome
Stéphanie Guéret is a Senior Research Scientist at AstraZeneca, Sweden in the Medicinal Chemistry Department of the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases IMED Biotech Unit. Since 2015, she joined the AstraZeneca-Max Planck Institute Satellite Unit, embedded within the group of Prof. Waldmann in Dortmund, Germany. She actively contributes to the satellite unit’s research projects, which focus on the use of New Modalities, including stabilized peptides and novel macrocycles to address challenging targets. Stéphanie obtained her PhD in 2011, from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, where she completed the first total synthesis of the spiroimine unit of the Spirolide Natural Product family, in the group of Prof. Margaret Brimble. She then moved to Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Basel, Switzerland as a Presidential Postdoctoral fellow and successfully developed a new class of cyclic peptidomimetics, while extending her knowledge of medicinal chemistry by looking at the biological activity and ADMET properties of her cyclic carbo-isosteric peptides. Her current research interests include complex organic synthesis, macrocycles, understanding protein-protein interactions and innovation at the interface of chemistry and biology using New Modalities.
Close window Novel Hybrid Macrocyclic Modalities for Structure-Based Protein Mimetics
Education:
10/1990 – 01/1996 Studies in Chemistry, Universität Wuppertal, Germany 01/1996 – 08/1996 Diploma Thesis, Universität Wuppertal, Germany Project: “Studies towards α-N-Hydroxyacidamides using a new chiral Glycin-α-electrophilic-equivalent” Research Advisors: Prof. H-J. Altenbach (Universität Wuppertal) Research and Professional Experience 08/1996 – 01/1999 Ph.D., Universität Wuppertal, Germany Project: “Synthesis of α-Aminoacids and α-N-Hydroxyacidamides using a new chiral Glycin-α-electrophilic-equivalent” Research Advisor: Prof. H-J. Altenbach 01/1999 – 04/2000 Postdoctoral Associate, University of Cambridge, Cambridge/UK Project 1: “1,2-Diacetals in Synthesis: Total Synthesis of a Glycosylphosphatidylinositol Anchor of Typanosoma brucei ” Project 2: “Synthetic Studies Towards the Synthesis of Spongistatin 1” Mentor. Prof. S.V. Ley since 05/2000 Lab Head in Medicinal Chemistry, Bayer AG, Pharmaceuticals Therapeutic areas: cardiology research Close window Discovery of a Novel Oral NO- and Heme-Independent sGC Activator BAY 1101042
Laura H. Heitman, PhD. is a tenured associate professor of Receptor Pharmacology at the Division of Drug Discovery and Safety at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR, Leiden University), after being appointed as ‘tenure track’ assistant professor in January 2009. Her research interests are mainly focused on understanding and improving drug-receptor interactions, and more specifically, target binding kinetics and allosteric modulation of GPCRs. She has obtained several competitive research grants, all allowing her to study these novel, clinically relevant and highly translational concepts for drug action. Her research activities have currently led to an authorship on over 80 papers in this field, including one in Science (2012) and one in Nature (2016). She is the recipient of the ‘2017 MedChemComm Emerging Investigator’-award and runner up for the ‘2018 EFMC Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia’-award.
Close window Allosteric Modulation of the mGlu2 Receptor: from Structure-Kinetic Relationships to in vivo Efficacy
Jesús Jiménez Barbero is Ikerbasque Research Professor and Scientific Director of CIC bioGUNE since November 2014. He received his doctorate in Chemistry in 1987, working at the Institute for Organic Chemistry of CSIC. Between 1988 and 1992 he carried out postdoctoral stays at the University of Zürich (Switzerland), at the National Institute of Medical Research in Mill Hill (United Kingdom) and at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (USA). After his return to Madrid, with a position as a senior scientist at CSIC, began working in the area of molecular recognition, especially in the study of interactions between proteins and ligands, possible drugs or probes. In 2002 he was promoted to CSIC Research Professor at the Center for Biological Research. In this center he developed his scientific activity until 2014 and was Director of the Chemical & Physical Biology Department from 2009 to 2014. His scientific interests are centered in the field of Chemical Biology, especially in discovering the mechanisms of molecular recognition involved in protein-protein or ligand-protein interactions in processes of biomedical interest essential for life.
Close window Breaking the Limits in Analyzing Carbohydrate Recognition by NMR
Tankyrase Inhibitor Development: Evidence for Potential in Cancer Immune Therapy
After his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1990 at University of Southern Denmark and stay in the group of Professor Barry Trost at Standford University in California, he joined Health Care Discovery at Novo Nordisk.
Jesper Lau has 28 years’ experience in pharmaceutical discovery and holds a broad knowledge in small molecule based therapeutics as well as a comprehensive know-how within protein engineering with special focus on glucagon like peptide-1 and is inventor of semaglutide. In addition he is adjunct professor at Fudan University in Shanghai since 2016.
Close window The Discovery of Semaglutide - A Journey from Ala Scan to Structural Design of GLP-1 Analogues
Stefan Laufer, is Professor for Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry at Tuebingen University. He received his degrees from Regensburg University. After 10 years in Pharmaceutical Industry he joined in 1999 Tuebingen University as Chairman Pharm./Med. Chemistry. His research interests are anti-inflammatory and cancer drug discovery with various eicosanoid (COX-1,2,3, LOXs, mPGES1, cPLA2) and protein kinase targets (p38, JAKs, JNKs, CK1d, mtEGRFs) . Three compounds from his lab entered clinical development phases. Dr. Laufer chairs the ICEPHA (Interfaculty Center for Pharmacogenomics and Drug Research) and TüCADD, Tuebingen Center for Academic Drug Discovery. As part of this work, a proprietary kinase inhibitor collections is established (TüKIC, 8000 cpds). He authored more than 400 publications, 14 books/bookchapters and is inventor in 42 patent families.
Close window EGFR Triple Mutant L858R_T790M_ C797S Recent Set-Backs and New Hope in Fighting Mutant Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer
Dr David E Leahy is founder and lead partner in ‘The Discovery Bus Ltd’, created to explore the application of autonomous software agents in drug design and discovery. After a degree in Natural Science and a Phd in Organic Chemistry he joined ICI Pharmaceuticals to work on new drug design methodologies. He led the in silico, physical organic and analytical sciences at Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, before founding Cyprotex PLC, the worlds leading ADMET company acquired by Evotec in 2016.
Since then, he has been actively involved in multiple commercial and academic initiatives to develop novel highly scalable and autonomous software based design systems that can radically enhance the productivity of drug discovery. He is now developing novel AI platforms for drug discovery Close window Artificial Intelligence. Not Just Another Name for in Silico Design
Mark J. Millan was born in Edinburgh and studied Natural Sciences (major focus, Zoology and Ecology) at the University of Cambridge from which he received B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. He retrained at the Max-Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich where his work (rewarded by the Serturner Prize) focussed on pain, stress and endogenous opioids. He is currently Director of Pharmacological Innovation in CNS at the Institute de Recherche, Servier, Paris. He is a long-standing member (erstwhile Secretary and Workshop Chair) of the Executive Committee of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. Since 2010, he has been an Honorary Professor in the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow. His major research goals are improving our knowledge, treatment and prevention of psychiatric and neurological disorders. His work has led to nearly 50 patents, 400+ papers (“h”>80), the discovery of many novel compounds, and characterization of the antidepressant, Agomelatine. In 2014, he was awarded the Arien’s Prize in Pharmacology for contributions to CNS Research and Drug Discovery. He is very interested in the protection and restoration of ecological networks like coral reefs, which are organized and operate in ways remarkably similar to the human brain.
Close window Multi-Functional Treatments for Multi-Factorial Neurodegenerative Disorders: the Challenge of Alzheimer's Disease
Dr. Laurence Mulard graduated as an engineer from the ESPCI (Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles, Paris, France). She received her PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University Paris 6 (Paris, France). After three postdoctoral years at the NIH (Bethesda, MD, USA) studying Glycoscience in the group of Dr Glaudemans, she joined Institut Pasteur (Paris, France). She was promoted Research Director in 2007 and was appointed Head of the Chemistry of Biomolecules Laboratory a year later. In 2015, she was nominated Deputy Director of the Structural Biology and Chemistry Department. Her research interests are in the area of Chemical Glycoscience with focus on a chemistry-driven multidisciplinary strategy towards the development of novel carbohydrate-based therapeutics and/or vaccines against infectious diseases. In recent years, she has gained some expertise in technological transfer and translational sciences as the first Shigella synthetic carbohydrate-based vaccine candidate has entered clinical trials.
Close window A Multidisciplinary Strategy to Synthetic Carbohydrate-Based Conjugates for Vaccination against Shigella: from Concept to First-in-Human Study
Dr. Mikihiko Naito is currently Director of the division of Molecular Target and Gene Therapy Products in National Institute of Health Sciences in Japan. After he obtained his Ph.D. degree in the University of Tokyo, he studied anti-cancer drug resistance, cell death mechanism and anti-apoptotic proteins in the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, the University of Tokyo, as an Assistant and Associate Professor. Then he moved his lab to the National Institute of Health Sciences, and established the protein knockdown technology with SNIPER compounds. He has published over 190 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Close window Recent Advances in Bifunctional Degrader Molecules (e.g. SNIPER) for Targeted Protein Degradation via the Ubiquitin Proteasome System; Status and Outlook
Herman Overkleeft (12-04-1969) studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, where he obtained his PhD degree in 1997 on his Thesis entitled ‘Azasugars. Synthesis and evaluation as glycosidase inhibitors’ (promotor Professor Dr Upendra Pandit). From 1997 to 1999 he was postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University (supervisor Professor Dr Jacques van Boom) and from 1999 to 2001 at the Harvard Medical School (supervisor Professor Dr Hidde Ploegh). Since 2001 he is Professor in Bioorganic Chemistry at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Leiden University. He is the recipient of the Golden Medal from the Royal Dutch Chemical Society (2008); a Wilhelm Friedrich Bessel Forschungspreis from the Humboldt Foundation (2012) and the Jeremy Knowles Award from the Royal Chemical Society (2015). His current research interests include the design, synthesis and application in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology research of inhibitors for glycosidases, glycosyl transferases and proteases.
Close window Activity-Based Glycosidase Profiling in Biomedicine and Biotechnology
Roberto Pellicciari is President and CEO of TES Pharma, Perugia, Italy, and Adjunct Professor in the University of Maryland, USA. Prior to that he has been pre-and postdoctoral fellow in the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Visiting Professor in the Universidad de Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela, Research Associate in the Department of Chemistry, Bloomington Indiana, Visiting Professor in the Department of Chemistry, University of California at San Diego (UCSD), La Jolla, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Technology of Drugs, University of Perugia. Prof. Pellicciari has been Director of the School of Medicinal Chemistry (ESMEC) of the Italian Chemical Society (SCI), President of the Italian Division of Medicinal Chemistry (SCI), President of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC). He is author or co-author of over 350 papers and 50 patents, has given seminars in important international congresses and institutions and has been the recipient of several awards.
His main lines of research have been directed to the development of new synthetic methodologies, the chemistry of natural products, the design and synthesis of molecules active on the CNS. A significant portion of the research was directed to the discovery of new drugs for metabolic and liver diseases.
Close window Obeticholic Acid, Leading in the NASH Race. History and Perspectives
Robert Pulz earned his chemistry diploma at the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany in 1999 and received his PhD in 2002 from the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany in the group of Prof. Hans-Ulrich Reissig. He then moved to the United States to perform postoctoral studies with Prof. Robert K. Boeckman at the University of Rochester, NY. In 2004 he joined the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland as medicinal chemist, where he contributed to various discovery projects in the fields of muskoloscelatal, respiratory and autoimmune diseases. Currently he is a Senior Investigator and Group leader in the Discovery Chemistry department.
Close window Discovery of LOU064, a Covalent BTK Inhibitor with Best in Class Selectivity
Dr Laura Quaranta, Senior Team Leader and Project Leader in Research Chemistry, Syngenta CP
Laura Quaranta was born in Italy where she completed her chemistry studies at the University of Florence. She moved to Switzerland joining the group of Prof. Philippe Renaud at the University of Fribourg where she obtained the Ph.D. working on the development of chiral relay effects in Lewis Acid promoted enantioselective transformations. She subsequently did post-doctoral study in the group of Prof. J.D. White at the Oregon State University (USA) working on an asymmetric total synthesis of the marine toxin (-)-Gymnodimine. Laura joined the Research Chemistry division at Syngenta Crop Protection (Switzerland) in 2001 where she currently works as Senior Team Leader and Project Leader.
The current research interests and in-depth expertise of Laura Quaranta are in the disease control area, where she is currently leading projects addressing multiple challenges in agriculture.
Close window Synthesis and Fungicidal Activity of a New Family of Oxysterol Binding Protein Inhibitors
Dr. Murali Ramachandra is the Chief Scientific Officer at Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited, a biotech company engaged in drug discovery for cancer and inflammatory diseases. At Aurigene, Dr. Ramachandra has been mentoring and leading drug discovery efforts, which have resulted in successful delivery of multiple candidates, which are in different stages of clinical development. Dr. Ramachandra had earlier worked on various aspects of cancer and inflammation at Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals and National Institutes of Health (USA). He received his PhD from University of Idaho, and post-doctoral training from University of Kansas Medical Center and DuPont Experimental Station.
Close window Small Molecule Immune Checkpoint Antagonists for Cancer Therapy
Dr H. Ratni is an Expert Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry, at F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., pRED, Pharma Research & Early Development, Roche Innovation Center Basel, Switzerland.
He received his PhD at the University of Geneva and a post-doc at Tokyo before joining F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd in 2001. His research has mainly been devoted to the areas of neuroscience, bringing 4 molecules in human clinical trials (e.g. V1a receptor antagonist for the treatment of autism). In 2005, he participated in a secondment within the Roche group at Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, Gotemba Japan, in the field of renal disease. He was the chemistry discovery project leader of the SMN program aiming for a treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, now undergoing pivotal clinical trials in patients. His current focus is on gamma secretase modulator for Alzheimer disease.
He is an author or co-author of more than 100 patents and publications. In 2014 he received the Roche Leo Sternbach Award for Innovation in Chemistry and in 2016 the Gold medal at the Roche Patent Inventor’s recognition event.
Close window Discovery of RG7916, a Selective SMN2 Splicing Modifier for the Treatment of Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Research field: Fungicide chemistry and biology, natural products.
CV: Studies in chemistry and biology at Karlsruhe and Braunschweig. PhD at Marburg with Prof. Reetz (small ring chemistry). Postdoc at Canberra, Australia with Prof. Mander (natural product synthesis). Joined BASF crop protection in 1987 (herbicides). Recently I have built up a research group at Mumbai, India. Close window Natural Products as Leads in Agrochemistry
Raphaël Rodriguez carried out his PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. M. Santelli and Sir J. E. Baldwin in Marseille and Oxford, where he completed the synthesis of complex natural products. He joined the University of Cambridge in November 2005 as a Cancer Research UK Postdoctoral Fellow under the mentorship of Sir S. Balasubramanian and was promoted to Senior Research Associate in 2009. His studies established a firm link between G-quadruplex DNA and genome instability in human cells. In 2012, he joined the CNRS (ICSN, Gif-sur-Yvette) as a Principal Investigator and is now Director of Research at Institut Curie (Paris). He has developed original small molecules and protocols to dissect cellular processes relevant to human health including aging and cancer. His recent endeavours led to identifying iron as a druggable target in mesenchymal cancer cells. He is primarily interested in the chemistry of cancer with particular focus on the regulation of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition programme. He is the co-author/inventor of 65 articles, book chapters and patents and commercialized several biologically active small molecules. He was awarded an ERC consolidator grant, the SFC-Fournier prize, Emergence Ville de Paris award, Pierre-Fabre award for therapeutic innovation, K2 Trophy in oncology and has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Franco-British Young Leaders.
Close window An Iron Hand over Cancer Stem Cells
Webster Santos is the Cliff and Agnes Lilly Fellow of Drug Discovery and Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Tech. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, which was followed by an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. His research efforts include designing inhibitors of RNA-protein interactions involved in HIV-1, sphingosine kinase inhibitors, mitochondrial uncouplers, and developing synthetic chemistry methods involving boron and silicon.
Close window Controlling Sphingosine-1-Phosphate Levels as a Therapeutic Strategy
Current title and position:
Since July 2017, my position is Head of France Integrated Drug Discovery (IDD), a unit of the global research platform of Sanofi Research field: Discovery of development candidates mainly for the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases. Education and former professional experience: I am organic chemist by training (Postdoctoral fellowship in Pr. J. Rokach’s laboratory (Florida Institute of Technology, USA). Synthesis of Isoprostaglandins. 1990- 1991). In Sanofi since 1991. At that time, I joined the Anti-infective therapeutic area of Roussel-Uclaf in Romainville (Paris area) as medicinal chemist. In 2009, I became global head of medicinal chemistry of the Oncology Business Unit and then (2014) Head of the Lead Optimization Medicinal Chemistry group in the Lead Generation platform. Author of more than 20 conferences in international symposia, 25 publications in Journals and inventor in about 20 patents (applications) Close window Design and Rationale for Exquisite Selectivity of Preclinical and Clinical Kinase Inhibitors
Magnus Schou is an associate principal scientist at the AstraZeneca PET Science Centre at Karolinska Institutet. His main research focus is on the development of novel translational imaging biomarkers and radiochemistry approaches that permit late-stage drug labeling with 11C and 18F. Magnus obtained his PhD from a graduate partnership program between Karolinska Institutet and the National Institutes of Health in 2006. He joined the neuroscience unit at AstraZeneca in 2007 and five years later transferred to the precision medicine and genomics unit, where he is currently active.
Close window PET in Neuroscience Drug Discovery and Development
Computer-Aided Synthesis Planning
My research focuses on a chemical biology approach to molecular interactions. A career medicinal chemist I worked in pharma (12 years), in biotech and academia. In pharma I worked on the successful anti-migraine drug zolimitriptan, also invented GW4991W93 a compound which completed phase 2 clinical trials. The CNS drug theme continued with my work in academia on sodium channel blockers for neurodegeneration in multiple sclerosis (MS). MS has become a major theme with the discovery of a potassium channel activator (VSN16R) as a potential treatment for MS related spasticity. This is now in phase 2 clinical trials. Other long running research themes feature the development of small molecule ligands for protein/peptide receptors. This includes is the study of neuropilin-1 in the vascular and immune system. With links to immune activation neuropilin-1 is relevant to the progression of MS and is an anti-cancer target. NPRC (gene NPR3) is the receptor for the peptide CNP in the cardiovascular system and shows many protective effects. Our work in this area makes extensive use of biophysical techniques.
Close window C-Natruiretic Peptide Agonists for Cardiovascular Disease
Current title and position: Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Hokkaido University
Research field: medicinal chemistry on second messengers, peptidomimetics, neurotransmitters, lipid mediators, and chemistry on cyclopropane Education: B. S., Hokkaido University, 1980 M. S., Hokkaido University, 1982 Ph. D., Hokkaido University, 1987 Positions Held 1982-1992 Research Chemist, Toyo Jozo Co. and Asahi Chemical Industry Co. 1992-2005 Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Hokkaido University 2005 - The present post Close window Design and Synthesis of Congerners of Cyclic ADP-Ribose, a Ca2+-Mobilizing Second Messenger, Toward Identification of the Target Protein
Patrick G. Ryan/Aon Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University
Research Field: Medicinal Chemistry and Enzymology: Rational design, synthesis, evaluation, and mechanism of action of enzyme inhibitors and activators Education: B.S. in chemistry: The Pennsylvania State University (1968); Ph.D. in organic chemistry: Harvard University (1974; with time off for a two-year military obligation from 1969-1971); NIH postdoctoral fellow: Graduate Department of Biochemistry, Brandeis University (1974-1976) Other Positions Held: Assistant Professor (1976-1982), Associate Professor (1982-1986); Professor (1986-present); Arthur Anderson Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry (1996-1998); John Evans Professor of Chemistry (2004-2015), Northwestern University Close window Design, Synthesis, and Mechanism of β-Glucocerebrosidase Activators for Gaucher’s and Parkinson’s Diseases
Current title and position:
Full Professor of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana (UL FCCT). Education: Diploma (1986); Ph. D. of Chemistry (1990), both UL FCCT. Supervisor: Prof. Branko Stanovnik. Postdoctoral fellowship: Alexander von Humboldt fellow (1997 – 1998), Universität Stuttgart, Institut für Organische Chemie und Isotopenforschung, Prof. Volker Jäger. Former professional experience: Assistant Professor (1996–2001), Associate Professor (2001–2006), all at University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Research interests/field: Organic synthesis (stereoselective, combinatorial, heterocyclic, 'click', etc.), chemistry of enaminones, pyrazolidinones, and azomethine imines, 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions, catalysis, materials. Close window New Chemical Libraries in Exploration of Chemical Space
Nick Terrett is Scientific Associate Vice President and European Chemistry Lead for Merck Sharp & Dohme Research GmbH based in Lucerne, Switzerland. Prior to his current role, Nick was CSO for Ensemble Therapeutics, a biotech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that had a focus on the discovery of novel macrocyclic molecules with efficacy against significant oncology targets. Before Ensemble, much of Nick’s career was at Pfizer both in the UK and US where, among other activities, he was lead chemist and inventor for the program that discovered sildenafil (marketed as Viagra™ and Revatio™). Nick has an MA and PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge.
Close window Cell Permeability with Beyond ‘Rule of 5’ Modalities – Do We Understand How This Works?
Martin K. Thomsen has a profound interest in cancer biology and use of in vivo models to explore biological questions. He obtained his PhD at The Institute of Cancer Research in London working on prostate cancer. Hereafter he trained at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, working with genetically modified mouse models and patient samples to study liver diseases.
In 2016 Martin K. Thomsen started his research group at the Institute for Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University, Denmark. The aim of the group is to study cancer in advanced animal models by use of CRISPR technology. For this, a Cas9 mini pig has been cloned and a similar mouse model has been obtained. Projects related to lung, skin and prostate cancer are currently ongoing.
Close window In vivo Anti-Viral and -Tumor Effect Of 3’3’-cAIMP STING Activation
Dr. Nicolas Thomä was educated at the University of Cambridge, UK. He also did his PhD at Cambridge with Dr. Peter Leadlay in enzymology, followed by postdoctoral work in structural biology in the laboratories of Prof. Roger Goody (Max-Planck-Institute Dortmund, Germany) and Prof. Nikola Pavletich (MSKCC, New York, USA). In 2006 Nicolas became a group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland.
His lab focuses on the structure function of the genome maintenance machinery. Nicolas has had a particular interest in understanding CUL4 ubiquitin ligase function, and their regulators. In recent years, he worked on the CRL4(CRBN) ligase and ways to modulate ligase function through small molecules.
Close window The Zinc-Degrome
Jan Willem Thuring is a Scientific Director and team leader in Oncology Discovery Chemistry at Janssen Research & Development in Beerse (Belgium). He studied chemistry and specialized in organic chemistry at the Radboud University Nijmegen (the Netherlands) under the supervision of professor Zwanenburg. He conducted postgraduate studies at Duke University (NC, USA) with Professor Ned Porter and at Cambridge University (UK) with Professor Andrew Holmes. He joined Bristol-Myers Squibb in Wallingford (CT, USA) to work under the guidance of Drs. Nicholas Meanwell and Paul Scola on antiviral based medicinal chemistry projects. He then moved to Janssen in 2002 and assumed roles of increasing responsibility in discovery chemistry in the fields of gastro-intestinal diseases, neuroscience, infectious diseases and most recently oncology. Jan Willem together with his teams discovered several molecules that entered into pre-clinical and clinical development. He is an author or inventor on over 80 scientific publications and patent applications.
Close window Discovery of JNJ-64619178 as a Potent and Selective PRMT5 Inhibitor for the Treatment of Lung and Hematologic Cancers
Peter Timmerman studied Organic and Analytical Chemistry at the ‘Vrije Universiteit’ of Amsterdam (1984-1989). He obtained a PhD-degree in Supramolecular Chemistry (summa cum laude) from the University of Twente with David N. Reinhoudt (1994), where he was an Assistant Professor from 1995-2001. Thereafter, he joined to company Pepscan Therapeutics in Lelystad/NL, where he currently holds the position of CSO and as such drives further advances in protein mimicry technology for therapeutic antibody development and peptide businesses. He is the inventor of Pepscan’s proprietary and broadly applicable ‘2-CLIPS’ technology for conformationally constrained peptides. The technology is a.o. applied to the mapping of conformational and discontinuous antibody binding sites. Lately, the startup company Bicycle Therapeutics was granted a license to the CLIPS-technology for development of therapeutic 2-CLIPS peptides. Timmerman also led the development of a therapeutic peptide-based anti-VEGF-vaccine that is currently in Phase-IIa clinical testing. Since March 2007 he holds a Special Chair in ‘Protein Mimetic Chemistry’ at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam. Timmerman is co-author of >80 peer-reviewed scientific papers and >10 patents.
Close window Tricyclic Peptides via Templated Tandem CLIPS/CUAAC Cyclizations
Mat Todd was born in Manchester, England. He obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from Cambridge University in 1999, was a Wellcome Trust postdoc at The University of California, Berkeley, a college fellow back at Cambridge University, a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London and since 2005 has been at the School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney where he is Associate Professor.
His research interests include the development of new ways to make molecules, particularly how to make chiral molecules with new catalysts. He is also interested in making metal complexes that do unusual things when they meet biological molecules or metal ions. His lab motto is "To make the right molecule in the right place at the right time", and his students are currently trying to work out what this means. He has a significant interest in open science, and how it may be used to accelerate research, with particular emphasis on open source discovery of new medicines. He founded and currently leads the Open Source Malaria (OSM) and Open Source Mycetoma (MycetOS) consortia, and is a founder of a broader Open Source Pharma movement. In 2011 he was awarded a NSW Scientist of the Year award in the Emerging Research category for his work in open science and in 2012 the OSM consortium was awarded one of three Wellcome Trust/Google/PLoS Accelerating Science Awards. For his open source research, Mat was selected for the Medicine Maker's Power List in 2017. He is on the Editorial Boards of PLoS One, ChemistryOpen and Nature Scientific Reports. Close window All Bugs are Shallow: Open Source Drug Discovery
Dr Tóth has a long-term focus on developing therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. Dr Tóth is CEO and Founder of Cantabio Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Tóth is also affiliated with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as the head of Neurodegenerative Disease Drug Discovery group, and is an honorary lecturer at the University College London School of Pharmacy in biotechnology business management. Dr Tóth holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Creighton University in 2001, and an MBA. in 2012 from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Tóth previously held various research roles in biopharmaceutical companies and was later affiliated with the University of Cambridge between 2010-2016, where he mostly pursued drug discovery research for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
Close window Targeting the Monomeric Intrinsically Disordered Structural State of Tau and Alpha-Synuclein by Small Molecules as a Potential Therapeutic Strategy for Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s Disease
Wes Trotter is currently a Director in the Discovery Chemistry group at MSD Boston. Born in Asheville, North Carolina, USA, he completed a B.S. in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina before earning an M. Phil. at Cambridge University in the laboratory of Dudley Williams and Ph.D. at Harvard University under direction of David Evans. Wes joined MSD, West Point, PA, in 1999 and moved to the MSD Boston site in 2009. Wes and his teams have discovered and advanced molecules into clinical development in therapeutic areas spanning oncology, cardiovascular, neuroscience, and immunology targets. His current research interests include approaches to eliciting and enhancing anti-tumor immune responses.
Close window Cyclic Dinucleotide STING Agonists as Anti-Tumor Agents
David earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined Novartis in 2001, at GNF in San Diego, where he led medicinal chemistry projects working across multiple therapeutic areas, and contributed directly to the discovery of three Novartis development compounds currently in Phase 2 clinical trials. In 2012, he moved to the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research site in Emeryville, California, where he is currently Director of medicinal chemistry.
Close window Discovery of LJN452 (Tropifexor), a Highly Potent, Non-Bile Acid FXR Agonist for the Treatment of Cholestatic Liver Diseases and NASH
Working at the company's European research headquarters at Ludwigshafen in Germany, Sean Turner is responsible for strategic leadership of AbbVie’s involvement in external consortia. In his 19 years with the company, he has initiated and led multiple projects both internally and as external partnerships with companies in Europe and Asia. He has also worked in AbbVie’s Licensing & Acquisitions group where he was responsible for identification of new partnering opportunities with academia and biotech. Sean has preclinical and clinical experience in therapeutic areas such as CNS, pain, oncology and urology, and contributed to delivering 8 new molecular entities that progressed to clinical trials. He obtained his doctoral degree in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Oxford under the guidance of Prof. Sir Jack Baldwin, furthered his studies with Prof. Henry Rapoport at the University of California at Berkeley and worked at Ciba-Geigy in Switzerland. To date, he is inventor of 39 US granted patents and has contributed more than 60 scientific publications and patent applications.
Close window Positive Allosteric Modulators of the GABA-B Receptor
Associate Director in Medicinal Chemistry at UCB BioPharma in Braine-L’Alleud (Belgium)
Anne Valade studied chemistry at the University of Paris XI (Orsay, France) and obtained her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 2004 with Prof. Jean-Marie Beau, in the field of dynamic combinatorial chemistry and carbohydrate chemistry. She then joined the group of Prof. David Hodgson at the University of Oxford for a 2-year Postdoctoral Marie Curie Fellowship, where she worked on total synthesis of squalestatin. In 2006 she was recruited as a Senior Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry at UCB Pharma in Braine-L’Alleud (Belgium) and she is now Associate Director in Medicinal Chemistry. She has been involved in several projects targeting central nervous system (CNS) diseases and contributed to the identification of several preclinical candidates, including the first clinical SV2A PET ligand.
Close window The Value of Orthogonal Techniques for Elucidating Binding Site(s) of GPCR Allosteric Modulators: a Case Study With Positive Allosteric Modulators of Dopamine Receptors
Eric Valeur is Director of New Modalities & Innovation, Medicinal chemistry at AstraZeneca, Sweden. Over his 15 years Drug Discovery experience gained at Merck, Novartis and AstraZeneca, he has led medicinal chemistry teams across several therapeutic areas and across modalities, including small molecules, macrocycles, peptides, oligonucleotides, drug conjugates and PROTACs, delivering clinical candidates and novel technologies. His vision is to move away from silos in the pharmaceutical industry by integrating chemical spaces, in essence leveraging the potential of each modality either separately or as hybrids. He is passionate about challenging targets and disruptive drug discovery, including outwards-looking innovation partnerships, such as the AstraZeneca - Max Planck Institute Satellite Unit he currently leads, and which is based in the group of Prof. Herbert Waldmann. Eric is co-author/co-inventor of over 50 publications, patents, posters and oral presentations, and holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, under supervision of Prof. Mark Bradley, and an MBA from Imperial College London.
Close window New Modalities for Complex and Unprecedented Biological Targets
Willem van Hoorn gained a chemical engineering degree and a PhD in computational chemistry at the University of Twente in the Netherlands followed by a postdoc at Yale. He subsequently spent a decade at Pfizer Sandwich focusing on computational techniques for HTS triage and combinatorial library design. This was followed by a position as consultant at Accelrys (now Biovia) assisting a range of clients from small biotech to big pharma. Since 2013 he is at Exscientia pursuing his long term interest of applying computer algorithms to drug discovery.
Close window Re-Energising Small Molecule Drug Discovery
Dr. Sci, PhD Dmitriy Volochnyuk at present shares his time between the posts of senior scientific advisor of ENAMINE LTD, Head of Department of Biologically Active Compounds at the Institute of Organic Chemistry NAS of Ukraine and Professor of Chemistry at the Institute of High Technologies of Kiev National University. He received his PhD in Organic Chemistry in 2005 and Dr.Sci in Organic and Organomettalic Chemistry in 2011. Having been previously working at the key positions in CRO industry (2006–2010: Director of Chemistry at Enamine Ltd; 2010–2014: Executive Director at Curplyx–Macrochem; 2014 – 2017: New business development director at Life Chemicals), Dr. Volochnyuk has over 10-year experience in managing chemical outsourcing projects and is an expert in fluoroorganic, organophosphorus, heterocyclic, combinatorial and medicinal chemistry. He is an author of more than 120 scientific publications.
Close window Synthesis of MedChem-Relevant Gem-Difluorocycloalkane Building Blocks
A New Target in Fungal Protein Biosynthesis: Shared Learnings for AgChem and MedChem
Current title and position
2014- Professor, ICMM, Faculty of Health, University of Copenhagen 2012- Co-director at Copenhagen Center for Glycomics (CCG), Danish National Research Foundation. My research activities are focused on genetic dissection of glycan functions. Although, glycans represent one of the four building blocks in biological systems we have limited knowledge of how glycans influence cellular function on the molecular level. We use a genetic approach combined with sophisticated mass spectrometry to systematically dissect the functional role of glycans in tissue formation, epithelial homeostasis, cancer formation, and host pathogen interactions. Moreover, we identify glycan signatures on proteins that can be used for precise detection and targeting of cancer cells, as well as novel vaccine designs. Close window Targeting of Cancer Specific Glycopeptide Epitopes
Sven Weiler, (Head of Chemistry, Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd); working in the area of antiinfectives and oncology.
Education and professional experience 1. PhD under the supervision of Prof. R. R. Schmidt (University of Konstanz, Germany) on synthesis of complex oligosaccharides. 2. Postdoc at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA, USA) in the group of Prof. Dr. Erik J. Sorensen on total synthesis of natural products. 3. Investigator at Novartis Pharmaceuticals working on several low molecular weight projects in the Musculoskeletal Disease Area. 4. Chemistry Project Team Head of the Novartis S1P-agonist project and project team member of the S1P-lyase inhibitor project. 5. Executive Director GDC-MSD (Global Discovery Chemistry – Musculoskeletal Diseases/Wound Healing) Close window Active Site Inhibitors of Sphingosine 1-Phosphate Lyase - Exploring Novel Biology with Tool Compounds
Bert Windhorst currently holds a position as professor in radiopharmaceutical chemistry at the VU University Medical Center, where he heads the radiopharmaceutical chemistry section of the department of Radiology & Nuclear Medicine with in total 43 people (staff, post-doc, PhD and technicians), chemists, biologist and engineers.
His main research interest is in the development and production of 11C and 18F radiolabeled compounds for clinical PET imaging.
With respect to this, he collaborates intensively with clinical researchers in research projects aimed to better understanding of disease by use of PET, personalized medicine and he has collaborates with pharmaceutical companies on the application of PET in drug development. He has established GMP facilities for PET tracer production and has been active in this field since 1998. He is (co)author of over 160 peer reviewed papers, 14 patents and 3 book chapters.
He has been President of the SRS, member of the board of the NKRV, EANM Drug Development committee, editor of the journal labelled compounds and radiopharmaceuticals. He is currently secretary of ESMI, editor in chief of Nuclear Medicine & Biology and member of the editorial board of several scientific journals.
His teaching responsibilities vary from radiopharmaceutical chemistry for bachelor student, specialized courses about radiopharmaceutical chemistry, and guest lecturer at several bachelor and master courses. He is member of the advisory board of the EANM radiopharmacy course.
Close window PET for Oncology Drug Discovery and Development
Current title and position:
Excecutive Director, Medicinal Chemistry, Neuropore Therapies, San Diego Ca., USA Research field: Drug discovery research for the treatment of vasular, neurodegenerative and oncological diseases Education and former professional experience: PhD, organic and medicinal chemistry, San Diego State University and University of Erlangen Head drug discovery research laboratory, Cancer Center at University of California, San Diego Close window Discovery of Peptidomimetics Targeting Protein-Protein Interactions of Alpha-Synuclein
Professor and State Specially Recruited Expert, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing China
Areas of Expertise: Chemical Biology, Membranes Biophysics, Medicinal Chemistry Education & Training: B.S.: Peking University (1999); Ph.D.: Yale University (2004); Postdoc: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (2004 - 2007) Selected: Awards and Honors: State Specially Recruited Expert (2017); ACS David W. Robertson Award, American Chemical Society (2016); CAPA Distinguished Junior Faculty Award (2012); NSF CAREER Award (2010); SU2C IRG Award (2010); AACR Gertrude B. Elion Award (2009); NIDA Early Career Award in Chemistry of Drug Abuse and Addiction (2009); NIDA Cutting-Edge Basic Research Award (2009); HHMI Collaborative Innovation Award (2009); Kimmel Scholars Award (2008); IUBMB Wood-Whelan Fellowship (2007) Close window Small Molecule Immunomodulators that Target Toll-Like Receptors
Scientific Vita
2015 – Present: Southern University of Science and Technology - Department Chair, Professor of Chemistry 2005 – 2015: Wuhan University - Professor of Chemistry 2007 – 2015: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - Distiguished Professor of Chemistry & Chemical Biology 1994 – 2006: The Pennsylvania State University: Professor of Chemistry (2003 - 2006) Associate Professor of Chemistry (1999 - 2003) Assistant Professor of Chemistry (1994 - 1999) Research Field Development of practical, selective and green catalytic reactions (such as asymmetric hydrogenation, asymmetric hydroformylation, linear hydroformylation) Recent Publications 1. C. Chen, Z. Zhang, S. Jin, X. Fan, M. Geng, Y. Zhou, S. Wen, X. Wang, L. Chung, X. Dong, X. Zhang; Enzyme-Inspired Chiral Secondary-Phosphine-Oxide Ligand with Dual Noncovalent Interactions for Asymmetric Hydrogenation. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2017, 56, 6808. 2. C. Chen, S. Jin, Z. Zhang, B. Wei, H. Wang, K. Zhang, H. Lv, X. Dong, X. Zhang; Rhodium/Yanphos-Catalyzed Asymmetric Interrupted Intramolecular Hydroamino- methylation of trans-1,2-Disubstituted Alkenes. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 9017. 3. C. You, B. Wei, X. Li, Y. Yang, Y. Liu, H. Lv, X. Zhang; Rhodium-Catalyzed Desymmetrization by Hydroformylation of Cyclopentenes: Synthesis of Chiral Carbocyclic Nucleosides. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 6511. 4. X. Deng, S. Ni, Z. Han, Y. Guan, H. Lv, L. Dang, X. Zhang; Enantioselective Rhodium-catalyzed Cycloisomerization of (E)-1,6-Enynes. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 6295. 5. H. Huang, X. Liu, L. Zhou, M. Chang, X. Zhang; Direct Asymmetric Reductive Amination for the Synthesis of Chiral β-Arylamines. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 5309. Close window Practical Asymmetric Hydrogenation
Prof. Dr.
Markus Zweckstetter
studied physics at the Ludwig- Maximilians-Universität München. He conducted his doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried and received his PhD from the Technical University of Munich. Subsequently, from 1999 to 2001, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (United States). In 2001, he established his Research Group Protein Structure Determination Using NMR at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. Markus Zweckstetter is also head of the Senior Research Group Structural Biology in Dementia at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and has been teaching as a professor at the University Medical Center Göttingen since 2012.
Close window Understanding Aggregation Inhibition of Alpha-Synuclein and Tau by Small Molecules Oral Communications
Dr. Amjad Ali is currently a Senior Principal Scientist and Chemistry program team lead on cardiovascular and immuno-oncology programs within the Discovery Chemistry department, Merck Research Laboratories, NJ USA. Prior to joining Merck in January 1998, he was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, USA working on the total synthesis of complex marine alkaloids. Dr Ali also held a Postdoctoral and Teaching Assistant position at the University of Sheffield, UK and he earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Nottingham, UK.
Dr. Ali’s work at Merck has spanned the drug discovery paradigm from lead ID to PIII, including membership of early and late stage drug development teams. He received the MRL key contributor award for his work on the CETP inhibitor Anacetrapib program which advanced into Phase 3 clinical trials and he was recognized as a key innovator for his work on the development of novel nitric oxide donors for the treatment of hypertension. Dr. Ali has authored more than 100 patent and publications and co-wrote two book chapters including one on 'Atherosclerosis: HDL elevation' published in 'Burger's Medicinal Chemistry, Drug Discovery and Development' (Wiley, 2010). Dr. Ali was elected Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2015. Close window Discovery and Clinical Evaluation of MK-8150, a Novel Nitric Oxide Donor with a Unique Mechanism of Nitric Oxide Release
Steve Andrews joined the Cambridge Drug Discovery Institute’s leadership team as Head of Chemistry in January 2016 to establish the laboratories, recruit scientists and setup drug discovery programs. Funded entirely by Alzheimer’s Research UK, the Institute now has close to 30 staff and a sustainable discovery pipeline in the area of neurodegeneration.
Steve was the 2015 recipient of EFMC’s Young Medicinal Chemist in Industry award. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry with Prof Steve Ley CBE FRS at the University of Cambridge and undertook postdoctoral studies at ETH-Zürich with Prof Erick Carreira. Steve was at Heptares Therapeutics during 2008-2015 where he led GPCR structure-based drug design programs with peptide, orphan, purine, and chemokine receptors. He co-invented Heptares’ first nominated clinical candidate, the adenosine A2A receptor antagonist HTL-1071, which is currently in Phase I clinical trials with AstraZeneca. Close window Brain-Penetrant Autophagy Modulators for Treating Neurodegenerative Diseases
Bernard Barlaam graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique, France. He then completed a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Samir Zard at University Paris XI Orsay and spent a year of post-doctoral research with Prof. Steven Ley at the University of Cambridge. In 1994, he joined Zeneca Pharmaceuticals (now AstraZeneca), working in Inflammation. In 1999-2000, he undertook a secondment in AZ Wilmington (USA), then moved to Oncology. He is currently Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry, Oncology, IMED Biotech at AstraZeneca in Cambridge, UK. His responsibilities include leading the Medicinal Chemistry on multiple drug discovery projects including a number of projects targeting kinases as potential cancer therapies. He has been involved in the delivery of many clinical candidates and is the author/inventor of ca. 80 patents and publications.
Close window Discovery of AZD4573, a Potent and Selective Inhibitor of CDK9 that Enables Transient Target Engagement for the Treatment of Haematological Malignancies
Stefan Bäurle is Senior Scientist at Bayer AG Pharmaceuticals in Berlin. He works within Medicinal Chemistry as Laboratory Head and Project Leader.
He started his industrial career at the former Schering AG in 2002, working across multiple therapeutic areas (dermatology, oncology, cardiovascular diseases, and gynecological therapies) at the sites in Berlin and Richmond, CA/USA. He contributed to the discovery of several clinical candidates e.g. in the BET inhibitor project, the GnRH antagonist project and the non-steroidal GR agonist project. Currently, he is engaged in projects within the Bayer-Evotec strategic alliance on endometriosis. Prior to joining industry, he studied chemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 2000 he completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Ulrich Koert at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with total syntheses of acetogenins from annonaceae, followed by postdoctoral work at Schering AG on ansa-steroids. Close window First Disclosure of the Clinical Candidate BAY-840, a Potent And Selective hBradykinin B1 Antagonist for the Treatment of Chronic Inflammatory Diseases, Generated within the Bayer-Evotec Strategic Alliance
José Cid received his MSc and Bs (1990) in Pharmacy and his PhD in Pharmacy (1995) from the University of Santiago de Compostela, (Spain) working on the synthesis of analogues with antipsychotic activity under the supervision of Prof. E. Ravina.
This was followed by a postdoctoral stay (1996/97) at University of Montreal working with Prof. S. Hanessian. His research was focused on “Conceptually novel approach to the design of antibacterial compounds in the quinolone family of antibiotics” and “Molecular recognition and assembly based on amino alcohols with a unique 3-dimensional topology”.
In 1997 he joined Janssen within the medicinal chemistry department. During this time, he was leading medicinal chemistry programs involved on the discovery and development of therapeutic agents mainly in the area of Central Nervous System, with several programs transitioning into clinical trials and in 2015, he was promoted to Senior Principal Scientist.
He is inventor on 33 patent applications and has (co)-authored 40 peer-reviewed journal articles. He presented his work at various internal conferences and posters and is regularly asked to review papers in high-impact journals
Close window Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor Type 2 Positive Allosteric Modulators (mGlu2 Receptor PAMS) as a Transformational Epilepsy Treatment
Gabriele Costantino graduated in Chemistry in 1992. In 1994 he became assistant professor and in 1998 associate professor in medicinal chemistry at University of Perugia (Italy). In 2007 he was appointed as full professor of medicinal chemistry at University of Parma (Italy), where he is now Director of the Department of Food and Drugs. Gabriele has been visiting scientist at Searle R&D (USA), University of Barcelona (Spain), University of Frankfurt (Germany). He is president of the Italian Division of Medicinal Chemistry and he has served as a member of the executive committee of the EFMC. Author of more than 140 scientific papers, Gabriele has been interested in the design and synthesis of neuroprotective agents, of modulators of metabolic nuclear receptors and, more recently, in the design and synthesis of novel antimicrobial agents with novel mechanisms of action.
Close window Targeting Non Essential Bacterial Targets as a Novel Route to Counteract Bacterial Resistance
Márton Csékei completed his PhD studies in synthetic organic chemistry at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. During his PhD studies he spent 5 months at the Research Centre of BASF in Ludwigshafen, which gave him a great experience in “industrial chemistry”. In 2007 he joined Servier’s new research center in Budapest the Servier Research Institute of Medicinal Chemistry. He worked on the Mcl-1 inhibitor program since its launch, which resulted S 64315, a clinical candidate presently in Phase I clinical trials in multiple indications. He rose through the ranks and in 2016 he was nominated as a Chemistry project leader for an undisclosed target. In this role he has been directing the research activity of an international chemistry discovery team spread across multiple sites.
Close window EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist in Industry
After completing a Master degree at the University of Science of Montpellier (France), I went to the University of Bern (Switzerland) for my graduate study on Organoboranes for radical mediated transformations, in the group of Prof. Philippe Renaud. In 2006, I joined Prof. Paul Wender’s group at Stanford University, California (USA), working on multicomponent transition metal catalyzed reactions and total synthesis of cancer therapeutic lead Laulimalide.
I have now over 10 years of industry experience, started at Novartis Pharma in Basel (Switzerland), on process oriented total synthesis antitumor agent Epothilone B. I’ve worked 5 years at Addex Therapeutics in Geneva (Switzerland), on allosteric modulators approach to CNS disorders. Then, I spent 2 years at Yuma Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), on therapeutic projects against neurodegenerative diseases. Since 2016, I am Senior Scientist and project leader of CNS imaging discovery programs at AC Immune in Lausanne (Switzerland). Close window Discovery of Candidates for PET Molecular Imaging of Pathological TDP-43 Aggregates in Frontotemporal Dementia and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Patients
My name is Rita Acúrcio, I am a PhD student on the Research Institute for Medicines (iMedULisboa) at Faculty of Pharmacy in Lisbon University. I hold a Bachelor degree in Chemistry from Porto University and a Master degree in Organic Synthesis and Natural Products from Aveiro University. Currently, I am on the third year of my PhD project entitled “Discovery and Development of New Small-Molecule immune system modulators”. My research is on the immune-oncology field focusing the design, synthesis, optimization and assay of revolutionary new small-molecule as immune system modulators using a joint computer-aided drug discovery strategy.
Close window New Small-Molecule Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors: A Step Forward in Cancer Immunotherapy
Al Dossetter gained his PhD from Nottingham University and after post-doctoral research at Harvard University joined AstraZeneca (AZ). He spent 13 years in medicinal chemistry spread across oncology (hormonal and kinase inhibitors), inflammation (OA and RA, enzyme inhibitors and GPCR targets) and diabetes (obesity, GPCR and enzyme inhibitors). In 2012 he co-founded MedChemica Limited centred around the technology of Matched Molecular Pair Analysis (MMPA) as a method of accelerating medicinal chemistry. MedChemica now licenses a suite of software tools for companies to extract and share knowledge from their own data and combine with public data. The software and methodologies have been used by many pharmaceutical companies, universities and biotechs to accelerate drug discovery programmes. Extending the methodology enabled MedChemica Limited to share medicinal chemistry knowledge between the research branches of AstraZeneca, Hoffman La Roche and Genentech. Previous to starting MedChemica Al gained his PhD from Nottingham University and after post-doctoral research at Harvard University joined AstraZeneca (AZ). He spent 13 years in medicinal chemistry spread across oncology (hormonal and kinase inhibitors), inflammation (OA and RA, enzyme inhibitors and GPCR targets) and diabetes (obesity, GPCR and enzyme inhibitors).
Close window Potency and Patents, New Arenas for Matched Molecular Pair Analysis in the AI World
Dr. Maria DUCA is head of « Targeting of Nucleic Acids » research group in the Institute of Chemistry of Nice (Université Côte d’Azur - CNRS). After undergraduate studies in Pharmacy and Medicinal Chemistry (Faculty of Pharmacy, Bologna, Italy), she obtained her PhD in Molecular Biochemistry under the supervision of Dr. Paola B. Arimondo (National History Museum, Paris, France) working on topoisomerase II inhibitors targeting specific DNA sequences. A 2-year post-doctoral training in Sydney Hecht’s lab (Departement of Chemistry, University of Virginia, USA) allowed her to pursue the study of nucleic acids/small molecules interactions working on targeted protein mutagenesis upon tRNA chemical modification. After CNRS recruitment as a Research Scientist in 2007, her research activities focus on the targeting of non-coding RNAs using synthetic small molecules toward innovative therapeutic approaches both in anticancer and antimicrobial applications.
Close window Synthetic Small-Molecule RNA Ligands: Scope and Therapeutic Applications
Peter is currently Scientifc Director at Boehringer-Ingelheim in the TA Oncology in Vienna. His team supports all cancer research and immune oncology projects by compound profiling and hit finding using both biophysical and function assays to. Peter graduated at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, in synthetic organic chemistry and received his doctoral degree there in 1990 (sub auspiciis praesidentis). After a postdoctoral stay at the Christian Doppler Laboratories for Chiral Compounds & Chemical Synthesis he joined the Novartis Research Institute in Vienna as a laboratory head in the antiviral therapy and immunopathology area in 1991. In 2005 Peter joined Boehringer-Ingelheim as a group leader in the Oncology Medicinal Chemistry Department. Peter is the author of numerous publication and patents and organized and chaired the JMMC 2005 and EFMC-ISMC in Vienna in 2008. His main research areas are in the areas of oncology and immunopathology covering many fields of medicinal chemistry, e.g. PPIs, kinase inhibitors, peptidomimetics, combinatorial chemistry and prodrugs.
Close window Chemical Probes for New Therapeutic Concept Discovery
Dr. Fernandez has been working during the last 20 years at GSK being now a Chemistry Manager in the Global Health Incubator unit. She got her PhD in Organic Chemistry in 1997 in the Complutense University at Madrid. Her Thesis was focused on the development of new selective serotonin 5-HT1a derivatives. After that, she joined GlaxoWellcome as post doc where she specialized in Combinatorial Chemistry and parallel synthesis techniques. In 1999 she became permanent staff at GlaxoWellcome, then GlaxoSmithKline, where she has worked as Medicinal Chemist combined with expertise in New Technologies and Purification. She has worked in multiple H2L and Lead Opt programs within the antiinfective area: antifungals, antibacterials, tuberculosis, malaria and other Kinetoplastid diseases. Since 2012 she is Chemistry Manager in the Malaria Unit at Tres Cantos (Spain), where she has led the chemistry team to discover and develop 4 pre-clinical antimalarial candidates. Dr. Fernandez is co-author of 26 international publications, 13 patents and several oral communications.
Close window Identification of New Antimalarial GSK607: An Example of Adaptive and Differentiated Early Drug Development
Paul undertook his Ph.D. studies in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Nottingham with Professor Gerry Pattenden and subsequently moved to the USA where he performed postdoctoral research with Professor E. J. Corey and then with Professor William Johnson. Paul started his career in drug discovery in 1994 as a medicinal chemist in the pharmaceutical industry with Pfizer at Sandwich (UK) and through his research he has helped to co-discover and deliver a number of drug candidates across several therapeutic disease areas, some of which have gone on to advanced clinical studies. In 2009, Paul joined Pfizer’s Regenerative Medicine and Epigenetic unit where he led the exploratory chemistry team in support of the unit’s small molecule and stem cell therapies for the treatment of neuroregeneration. In 2012 he was appointed as Professor and Chair of Medicinal Chemistry at the UCL School of Pharmacy where his research activities were focussed on the identification of new small molecule chemical probes for epigenetic protein targets. In 2016, he moved to his current position as Head of Chemistry for the ARUK UCL Drug Discovery Institute.
Close window Development of Potent, Selective, CNS Penetrant Small Molecule Inhibitors of Notum to Potentiate Wnt Signaling for the Maintainance of Synaptic Function in Alzheimer’s Disease
Dr Carles Galdeano is currently a Researcher at the University of Barcelona. His current main project aims at the identification and characterization of chemical probes to validate specific and medical relevant E3 ligases that can be also employed for PROTAC construction. He is also involved in several drug discovery programs to find new molecules for the treatment of cancer and Alzheimer.
Carles has been working in several interdisciplinary research groups around Europe and USA and he has learned new and broad range of concepts and ideas in the drug discovery field. He obtained his PhD in medicinal chemistry at University of Barcelona with two visiting stays at Virginia Tech (USA) and ICSN-CNRS (France). After that, he spent three years post-doc in the Alessio Ciulli’s lab (University of Cambridge, University of Dundee). In 2015, he joined the Barril’s lab (University of Barcelona) with a Beatriu de Pinos position. Close window Drugging the Fbw7 E3 Ligase with a Combined Computational and Biophysical Approach
Matthias Gehringer studied chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier (ENSCM) and the University of Heidelberg. He then moved to Tübingen University to perform doctoral studies on protein kinase inhibitors. As a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich, he worked on the total synthesis of mycolactones and on targeted antibiotic–protein conjugates. Matthias recently returned to Tübingen with the aim of establishing an independent junior research group. His research interests include medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, natural product synthesis as well as innovative drug targeting approaches.
Close window Buruli Ulcer and the mTOR Pathway: Total Synthesis, Structure-Activity and Target Elucidation Studies of Mycolactones
Victoria Georgi completed her studies of Biotechnology with the top grade 1.0 and received the „Clara-von-Simson Preis” (1st prize) for the best thesis of all female students of the Technical University of Berlin. She started in 2015 as a PhD student at the screening department of Bayer AG. Her dissertation was performed within the frame of the IMI ‘Kinetics for Drug Discovery’ project and focuses on large-scale binding kinetic profiling of kinase inhibitors. Biochemical and cellular assays as well as modelling and simulation techniques were used to gain insights into the influence of drug-target binding kinetics on selectivity profiles. The interplay between binding kinetic rate constantans and pharmacokinetics was considered for simulation of in vivo effects. The large binding kinetics dataset was additionally analyzed for structure kinetic relationships. Victoria Georgi also studied binding kinetics of GPCR agonists and antagonists and assessed the performance of the Motulsky-Mahan ‘kinetics of competitive binding’ model by Monte Carlo analyses. Currently, Victoria Georgi works as a laboratory head with employee responsibility at Bayer AG, developing enzymatic activity assays for high-throughput compound profiling.
Close window Large-Scale Analysis of Kinase Inhibitors' Target Binding Kinetics and its Implications for Drug Discovery
Brian Gerstenberger is currently a Senior Principal Scientist in the Inflammation and Immunology Medicinal Chemistry Group at Pfizer Inc. Brian earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry and Biochemistry at University of California, Santa Cruz. He joined Pfizer in 2007, at the Global Research and Development in Groton, Connecticut, where he worked and lead projects across a range of therapeutic areas including anti-bacterial, autoimmune, and epigenetics. Moving to Pfizer Kendal Square Research site in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2014 to join the Medicinal Chemistry Design group, where he is currently leading medicinal chemistry projects in the Inflammation and Immunology Medicinal Chemistry Group. Brian contributed directly to discovery of two Pfizer development compounds currently in Phase 2 and Phase 1 human clinical trials.
Close window Discovery of the TYK2 Selective Inhibitor PF-6826647 for the Treatment of Crohn’s Disease, and Other Autoimmune Conditions
Antimo Gioiello is Associate Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the
University of Perugia (Italy). After studying organic synthesis at the Department of Chemistry
(University of Perugia), he obtained his PhD in medicinal chemistry with Professor Roberto
Pellicciari. Antimo Gioiello has led several academic and industrial collaborations and his work
experience spans various stages of early drug discovery in the area of liver and metabolic diseases.
The main research interests of Antimo Gioiello include the design, synthesis and characterization
of biologically active compounds, the development of chemical probes for understudied biological
targets, the implementation of enabling chemical technologies to assist complex syntheses, the
set-up and assessment of processing methods and systems for compounds libraries and largescale
preparation. He is a co-founder of TES Pharma. Antimo Gioiello has co-authored several
scientific papers published in international peer-review journals, and holds patents in process
chemistry and bile acid receptor field.
Close window Integrated System for the Expedited Generation and Characterization of Drug-Like Libraries for Hit-to-Lead Explorations
Peter Grootenhuis is Senior Director Chemistry at Vertex in San Diego. Prior to joining Vertex in 2002, he worked at CombiChem-DuPont, San Diego (1998-2002), and Organon, the Netherlands (1989-1998). At Vertex, Grootenhuis has been working on CFTR modulators for cystic fibrosis and sodium channel blockers for pain. He was project-leader and co-inventor of eight compounds that entered clinical trials, including the FDA-approved drugs ivacaftor, lumacaftor, and tezacaftor. Grootenhuis got his PhD degree with Prof. Reinhoudt (Twente), after which he performed post-doctoral studies in computational chemistry with Prof. Kollman (UCSF), followed by a short sabbatical with Prof. Karplus (Harvard). Grootenhuis has published over 100 peer reviewed papers and is inventor of 68 patents.
Close window IUPAC-Richter Prize Lecture
Steven is a senior scientist in the department of medicinal chemistry at Astex Pharmaceuticals. He has been associated with a number of successful fragment-based drug discover projects aimed at identifying novel anti-cancer agents. Before joining Astex he worked for 5 years at GlaxoSmithKline within the anti-infectives section.
He received his MA in Chemistry at the University of Oxford in 1992, and his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 1995.
Close window ASTX660, the First Fragment-Derived IAP Antagonist in the Clinic
Dr. Janetka is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, an adjunct professor of Chemistry, a member of the Center for Women’s Infectious Disease Research and the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. He is co-founder of Fimbrion and ProteXase Therapeutics, two startup companies focused on antibacterial and anticancer therapies. He has authored 50 peer-reviewed publications and is an inventor on 20 issued US patents. Dr. Janetka’s research is centered on the discovery and development of unique small molecule therapeutics for infectious disease and cancer. His current research is focused on the rational design and synthesis of glycoside lectin antagonists and peptidomimetic protease inhibitors, as well as chemical biology tools.
Dr. Janetka earned a B.S. degree in Biochemistry from University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin. He completed his postdoctoral work at the NIH and then joined Vertex in 1997 working on drugs for Hepatitis C and cancer. Subsequently, at AstraZeneca he worked on kinase inhibitors and antagonists of the hedgehog pathway for cancer treatment. His project teams delivered two oncology drugs to clinical trials, the ERK kinase inhibitor BVD-523 (ulixertinib) and the CHK inhibitor AZD7762. Close window Glycoside Antagonists of Bacterial Lectins: New Treatment Options for Recurrent and Antibiotic Resistant UTI
Dr Allan Jordan joined the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute Drug Discovery Centre in July 2009 as Head of Chemistry. He gained a BSc in Chemistry from UMIST in 1993 and, after a short spell as a teaching assistant in Arizona, he returned to UMIST to conduct post-graduate research into anticancer natural products. Following post-doctoral work at the University of Reading, he joined Vernalis in Cambridge where he worked on a wide variety of projects. He has been involved in the delivery of ten pre-clinical candidates, of which five have successfully entered human clinical trials.
In his present role, alongside managing the chemistry team and progression of the drug discovery portfolio, he oversees the group’s capabilities in structural biology, computational chemistry and chemoinformatics. He is also passionately involved in science communication and research engagement with our supporters. In 2016 he received a Cancer Research UK “Flame of Hope” award for contributions to research engagement, the charity’s highest award for volunteer services. Close window Discovery of First-in Class, Selective and Noncovalent Small Molecule Inhibitors of DNMT1
Dr Jamie David Knight, Senior Research Scientist, Charles River, Harlow, CM19 5TR, UK.
Jamie completed a doctorate sponsored by the EPSRC and James Black Foundation in 2002, and postdoctoral fellowship in conjunction with Pfizer in 2004, under the guidance of Professor Susan Gibson and Professor Alan Armstrong, Imperial College London. He then joined Xention in 2004, charged with identifying novel ion-channel therapeutics. One program delivered XEN-D0101 and XEN-D0103 into the clinic for the treatment of atrial fibrillation. He then moved to Argenta in 2007, which was subsequently acquired by Galápagos in 2010 and latterly by Charles River in 2014. Highlights include having worked on collaborative programs with Astra-Zeneca, Pulmagen and Genentech to deliver strategic development candidates. Compounds AZD8683 and AZD2115 emanating from the AZ collaboration were advanced into clinical evaluation, as was ADC3680 with Pulmagen and more recently, GDC-0077 with Genentech entered FTIM clinical trials in 2016. Close window Discovery of GDC-0077: A Highly Selective Inhibitor and Degrader of Mutant PI3K-Alpha
Senior Investigator - Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research - Global Discovery Chemistry - Oncology
Dr. Rainer MACHAUER Studied chemistry from 1991 to 1996 at the Universities of Würzburg and Kaiserslautern (including a 6 month ERASMUS term at the University of Edinburgh). Completed the Ph.D. thesis in 2000 under the supervision of Prof. Herbert Waldmann at the University of Karlsruhe, followed by postdoctoral research in the group of Prof. Steven Martin at UT Texas at Austin. Started in Dec. 2001 at Novartis as medicinal chemist in the therapeutic area Neuroscience directly in the BACE project. This work was only interrupted by a 12-month job rotation to Oncology. When returning to Neuroscience became responsible for the BACE chemistry efforts from Dec. 2009 to 2013 leading to several development candidates, two entering clinical studies. Since 2013 in Basel Oncology contributing to several projects, with recent focus on targeted drug delivery. Close window The Discovery of CNP520, an Amino-1,4-Oxazine BACE Inhibitor in Prevention Studies
Daniel Merk graduated in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and received his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry from Goethe University Frankfurt. Since 03/2015, he is Junior Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry of Goethe University Frankfurt and since 03/2017 is an ETH-Fellowship scholar at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences of ETH Zürich. His research focuses on the exploration of nuclear receptors as pharmaceutical targets with special emphasis on FXR, PPARs, RXRs and orphan receptors, the medicinal chemistry of their natural and synthetic ligands, and the development of multi-target compounds.
Close window A Dual Modulator of Farnesoid X Receptor and Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase to Treat Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis
After receiving two BSc degrees in Chemistry as well as Environmental System Sciences, Anna Migglautsch finished her MSc studies in Chemistry in 2016. She is currently in the second year of her PhD studies working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Rolf Breinbauer at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Graz University of Technology.
In her research she focusses on the synthesis of new inhibitors of adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) and is further interested in the manifold pharmacological effects of ATGL inhibition via small organic molecules. This research is performed in close cooperation with the group of Prof. Dr. Rudolf Zechner (University Graz). Close window Development of Small-Molecule Inhibitors of Adipose Triglyceride Lipase (ATGL)
I am a senior PhD student in my final year of study at the School of Chemistry, University of Wollongong (UOW), working under the supervision of A/Prof. Danielle Skropeta and Dr Haibo Yu on a multi-faceted project with the aim to develop novel anti-metastatic compounds. My focus is on synthetic organic and computational chemistry including nucleoside and phosphonate chemistry, as well as MD simulations and free energy calculations. I began my Bachelor degree in medicinal chemistry in 2011 at UOW, received Dean’s Merit awards from 2012–2014 and graduated in 2014 with first class honours. My PhD is funded through an Australian Government Scholarship and has also attracted a number of travel grant awards. I have worked as senior laboratory demonstrator, mentor and peer study leader for undergraduate and junior PhD students and I am keen to pursue postdoctoral research in drug development.
Close window Development of Novel Sialyltransferase Inhibitors via Computer Aided Drug Design
Christian Ottmann, Ph.D., is Associate Professor for Molecular Cell and Structural Biology at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. He works on small-molecule modulation of Protein-Protein Interactions (PPIs) with a special focus on stabilization of 14-3-3 adapter protein PPIs. He is involved in several early drug discovery projects with the pharmaceutical industry and is coordinator of the FP7 Industry-Academia Partnership and Pathways (IAPP) 14-3-3STABS and the Horizon2020 European Training Network (ETN) TASPPI. Before taking up his current position in Eindhoven he was a group leader at the Chemical Genomics Centre (CGC) of the Max Planck Society in Dortmund, Germany. He obtained his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in 2003 from the University of Tübingen with Prof. Claudia Oecking. In 2012 he was recipient of the Innovation Award in Medicinal/Pharmaceutical Chemistry of the GDCh/DPhG and in 2013 of the Young Chemical Biology Award of the International Chemical Biology Society (ICBS).
Close window Small-Molecule Stabilization of Protein-Protein Interactions by Natural Products, Supramolecular Ligands, Fragments and Macrocycles
Dr. Vladimir A. Palyulin is a head of the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the Lomonosov Moscow State Univesity.
His research interests currently include the design and synthesis of allosteric modulators of AMPA and NMDA receptors, ligands of GABAA receptors as well as antiviral compounds, molecular dynamics simulations and development of new approaches for QSAR studies. Dr. Vladimir A. Palyulin graduated from Moscow State University in 1974 and received PhD degree in 1985 under the supervision of Professor N.S.Zefirov. Since 1974 he occupied research positions at the MSU, since 2013 he is a head of the laboratory. He published about 250 papers in the fields of medicinal chemistry, molecular modeling, QSAR, and conformational analysis. Close window AMPA Receptor Positive Allosteric Modulators Based on New Scaffolds: Design, Synthesis, and Studies
After finishing his BSc studies as a chemical engineer, Tamás Révész earned his MSc in synthetic chemistry in 2016. He is currently working at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the laboratory of Csaba Pal. The research group is studying how bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics.
His multidisciplinary research amalgamates chemistry, chemical biology, synthetic biology and computational modeling to develop less-resistance-prone antibiotics and to mitigate the threat caused by multidrug-resistant bacterial infections (http://group.szbk.u-szeged.hu/sysbiol/pal-csaba-lab-index.html).
Close window Charting the Structure-Resistance Landscape of Novel Antibiotics
Dr. Shabnam Shaabani studied chemistry at the Shahid Beheshti University (SBU), Tehran, Iran. She did her MSc and PhD under the supervision of Prof. Ahmad Shaabani. She was member of the exceptional talent center at SBU. Dr. Shabnam Shaabani is a visionary young scientist and her dream is to design, synthesize, and develop molecules for unmet medical needs such as orphan diseases. Currently, she is doing her postdoc at the Drug Design Group under Prof. Dömling’s supervision at the University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. Her research interests include artificial intelligence facilitated drug discovery and applications in chemistry, multicomponent reactions (MCR), application of MCR towards chemical biology, drug discovery in immune oncology and orphan diseases, and miniaturization, acceleration and automation in chemistry (Drug Discovery at the Speed of Sound). She is the author of more than 25 scientific articles and book contributions. Dr. Shabnam Shaabani is aiming to pursue an combined academic/industrial career.
Close window Small Molecules Inhibiting PD1-PDL1 Immune Checkpoint
Hong Shen received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. After almost 10 years at Merck he joined Roche Innovation Center Shanghai (RICS) in 2012, and now he is a Principal Leader, the Head of Medicinal Chemistry and the Head of External Innovation at RICS. Hong has drug discovery experience in the areas of infectious diseases, oncology, autoimmune diseases, inflammation, CNS disorders, and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. His teams have contributed to the discovery of 8 clinical compounds and numerous preclinical candidates. Hong is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has over 80 publications and close to 60 patent applications.
Close window Anti-HBV Drug Discovery Enabled by Structure-Based Drug Design and Phenotypic Screening
Mechanisms of HIV-1 Nucleocapsid Protein Inhibition by Small Molecules Targeting RNA
Dr. Hauke Szillat is Senior Scientist at Sanofi, Integrated Drug Discovery, Medicinal Chemistry Frankfurt, Germany.
Hauke studied chemistry at the University of Kiel and Münster. In 1999, he received his PhD under Prof. Alois Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung working in the field of organometallic catalysis and applications to the synthesis of structurally complex targets of biological significance. In 2000, he was engaged in postdoctoral studies with Prof. Victor Snieckus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Since 2001 he has been working at Sanofi as medicinal chemist for lead generation & candidate realization, parallel synthesis & natural products, and synthetic medicinal modalities, in different disease areas, including thrombosis, metabolic and infectious diseases. Close window Discovery and Optimization of Non-Covalent, Selective, and Bioavailable Small Molecule Inhibitors of the KEAP1-Nrf2 Pathway
Alexander Titz studied chemistry at the Technical University Darmstadt and the University of Bordeaux I. His diploma thesis was prepared at Novartis Pharma AG in the Protein Structure Unit.
After receiving his doctorate from the University of Basel in 2008, covering the medicinal chemistry of carbohydrate-protein interactions, he conducted post-doctoral research at the ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) at the Institute of Microbiology and Immunology. In 2010 he was awarded the Klaus-Grohe Prize for medicinal chemistry of the GDCh. Alexander Titz then moved to the Zukunftskolleg of the University of Constance as a group leader and focused on inhibitors of bacterial biofilm formation. Since 2013, he is group leader of the workgroup Chemical Biology of Carbohydrates at Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), an outpost of the HZI. Since 2017, the research in the Titz lab is funded by an ERC starting grant. 2018 Alexander Titz was awarded the Innovation Award in Medical/Pharmaceutical Chemistry by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker and the Deutsche Pharmazeutische Gesellschaft. Close window EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia
Juraj obtained his Master degree in organic chemistry at the Comenius university in Bratislava (Slovakia) before joining the group of Prof. Schmalz at the University of Cologne (Germany) where he completed his PhD in 2003. His PhD-work on iron containing carbocyclic nucleoside analogs has been recognized for outstanding achievements by the Kurt Alder prize. After postdoctoral studies with Prof. Boger at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla (California) working on the total syntheses of vinca alkaloids Vindoline and Vindorosine, he joined Novartis Basel in 2005. Apart from his strong organic synthesis background, with his 13 years of pharmaceutical experience in the autoimmunity and inflammation research area he gained a broad medicinal chemistry knowledge by working on diverse biological targets including kinases, proteases and GPCRs.
Close window Discovery of SPL-707: A Potent, Selective, and Orally Bioavailable SPPL2a Inhibitor
Fredrik Zetterberg is currently Director of medicinal Chemistry at Galecto Biotech (Sweden) and has been so for the last 4 years. In that role he has delivered clinical candidates, which are currently being developed towards NASH, Cancer and Ocular diseases. Before taking on the above role he worked in many roles for AstraZeneca in Mölndal contributing to several clinical candidates within cardiovascular and metabolic field reaching different stages in the portfolio. He has lately published a lot on his work on P2Y12R inhibitors and have contributed to the development of Brilinta/Brilique/Possia ® (ticagrelor). He also discovered Cleviprex ® (clevidipine), a university project work in collaboration with AstraZeneca resulting in a drug. He is the author on 15 publications and inventor on >15 patent applications. His education consists of a doctorate degree (PhD) from Uppsala University (Pher G Andersson and David Tanner), and a Master degree from Gothenburg University.
Close window The First Class of Orally Available Mono-Saccharide Galectin-3 Inhibitors for Treatment of Fibrosis (NASH) and Cancer |
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