Confirmed Speakers

Michelle is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco and an Adjunct Professor at the Buck Institute of Research on Aging. Her lab focuses on developing first-in-class chemical probes and drug leads for novel therapeutic targets in age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and cancer. Michelle co-directs the UCSF Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC) and frequently collaborates with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Several startup companies have grown out of work done at the SMDC. Michelle is the President of Board of Directors the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, a member of the Board of Directors for the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), and a member of the Editorial board of the Assay Guidance Manual and Current Protocols in Chemical Biology. She represents UCSF in the National Cancer Institute’s Chemical Biology Consortium and the Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM) consortium. Before UCSF, Michelle was the Associate Director of Cell Biology at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where she helped discover and develop inhibitors of protein-protein interactions, including IL-2/IL-2R, and LFA1/ICAM (lifitigrast).

Close window

Brent Nannenga is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering in the School for Engineering Matter, Transport and Energy at Arizona State University and a member of The Biodesign Institute’s Center for Applied Structural Discovery. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington in 2011 under the supervision of François Baneyx. Following his graduate studies, he conducted postdoctoral research at Janelia Research Campus (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) in the lab of Tamir Gonen, where he focused on the development and application of microcrystal electron diffraction (MicroED). Since joining Arizona State University in 2015, his research has focused on the continued development of MicroED, as well as using structure determination to engineer biomolecules and materials with novel and unique properties.

Close window

Alexander joined Idorsia in 2019 as a Molecular Modeling and Computational Chemistry Specialist. After graduating as a biochemist with an additional major in bioinformatics, he completed his PhD under Holger Gohlke (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) in the field of computational structure-based ligand discovery and the study of protein-protein interactions. Since 2014, he worked as a postdoc with Gerhard Klebe (Philipps-Universität Marburg) on the development of computational tools for structure- and fragment-based ligand discovery. Here, he contributed to the development of the Frag4Lead crystallographic fragment screening service facility in collaboration with the Macromolecular Crystallography group at the BESSY II synchrotron (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin). He is currently supporting the joint efforts of Idorsia and the Paul Scherrer Institute to identify new starting points to develop SARS-CoV-2 3CL protease inhibitors.

Close window

Xue Wang works as an engineer in the Workflow Solutions team of Thermo Fisher Scientific. She is developing new products and methods improving sample preparation for cryoEM Single Particle Analysis workflow. She received her Ph.D. in cryoEM and X-ray crystallography from Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011 and carried out her postdoctoral research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Before joining Thermo Fisher Scientific, Xue worked on the structural biology analysis of several viruses and proteins, including Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus, Ryanodine Receptors and Spliceosome, etc.

Close window

Dr Dirksen (Dirk) Bussiere earned his B.A. in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology from Northwestern University, his M.S. in Molecular Biophysics from Yale University, and his Ph.D. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Biophysics from Duke University. After completing his Ph.D. in 1996, Dirk joined Abbott Laboratories, working in the Structural Biology, Computer-Aided Drug Design, and Scientific Computing groups. He was subsequently recruited to Chiron Corporation in 1999 to start their structural biology, biophysics, and experimental structure-based drug design efforts. Chiron Corporation was then integrated into the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research and Dirk became the Director of the Structural and Biophysical Chemistry group at their Emeryvilla, California campus. During this time, he was named a Novartis Leading Scientist. In 2020, Dirk became the Senior Director of the Molecular Pharmacology department at Eli Lilly and Company, leading an effort that spans biochemistry, biophysics, in vitro and cellular pharmacology, chemical biology, bioNMR, and structural biology. Dirk’s research interests involve the application of biological, chemical, and structural data to the treatment of human disease.

Close window

Dzung Nguyen obtained his PhD in the research group led by Gerhard Klebe at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. The group focuses on several aspects of structure-based drug design and the mechanisms behind protein–ligand interactions using experimental and computational approaches.

Dzung graduated in Chemistry at the Philipps-Universität Marburg. During his graduate studies, he joined the Structural Genomics Consortium at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, to gain expertise in large-scale protein production and protein crystallization. In 2017, he moved back to Marburg and joined the group of Gerhard Klebe to focus on the design of protein–protein interface modulators targeting homodimeric protein complexes.

Close window

Dr. Amy Boncella earned her B.A. degree in biochemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and then completed a year-long post-baccalaureate position under the direction of Dr. Jennifer Martinez at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She completed her Ph.D. in chemistry at Colorado State University under the supervision of Professor Eric Ross in 2019 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Professor Christine Morrison at Colorado School of Mines. Her current work is focused on utilizing fragment- and structure-based drug discovery approaches to identify and develop inhibitors of iron-sulfur cluster biosynthesis pathways in bacteria as precursors to novel antibacterials.

Close window

My scientific career has focused on understanding the dynamics of protein structure and how it relates to function. I received my PHD in Chemistry at the University of Virginia working in Don Hunt’s lab during the birth of biological mass spectrometry and proteomics. After, at Genentech worked on structural analysis of therapeutic proteins and then did a postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech with Lee Hood focused on applications of biological mass spectrometry and. In 1991, I joined Merck Research Laboratories as a protein chemist working in various therapeutic areas such as inflammation and metabolic disorders. During my tenure at Merck, as Senior Director of Chemistry, my research team made significant contributions towards the discovery of MK-0431, a DPP4 inhibitor now in clinical use, and towards clinical development of DMP-777, an elastase inhibitor for treatment of cystic fibrosis. My responsibilities at Merck included overseeing the discovery DMPK operation within Chemistry supporting preclinical development. I also directed the Molecular Profiling Proteomics platform which was involved in mechanism of action studies, selectivity profiling, and biomarker discovery for all Merck programs worldwide. In 2002, I left Merck to become CSO of ExSAR, a biotech company focused the use of HDX mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) to aid in the development of chemical chaperones for protein misfolding disorders. In 2004, I joined The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), Scripps Florida as Professor and in 2007 was named founding Chair of the Department of Molecular Therapeutics. In 2017 was named Chair of Molecular Medicine. As PI, Co-PI, and co-investigator on several NIH-funded grants, my research continues to focus on protein structure and function, particularly on mutational- and ligand-mediated alterations in protein structural plasticity, as well as quantitative SAR to facilitate lead optimization of molecules targeting therapeutic proteins. Using mutagenesis, HDX-MS, crystallography, and NMR my research is focused on structure-function of nuclear receptors, enzymes, and membrane receptors.

For the first half of my career I was in industry where there was less of an emphasis on publications. However, over the last 16 years as an academic I have published >200 peer-reviewed manuscripts. According to Google Scholar I have an h-index of 78 (59 since 2015). Below is a URL for My Bibliography of Patrick R. Griffin; some papers are under Griffin P. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/patrick.griffin.1/bibliography/public/

Close window

Dr. Troy Johnson received his Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry from Emporia State University, he went to graduate school at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City where he worked in the lab of Dr. Todd Holyoak. Upon graduation with his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, he moved to Baylor college of medicine and worked as a post-doc for 18 months focusing on breast cancer. He then moved over to MD Anderson and worked in the lab of Dr. John Ladbury focusing on additional cancer targets. Approximately 5 years ago he moved into his current Research Scientist role within the Therapeutics Discovery Division. He is a structural biologist and protein chemist that is focused on early stage drug discovery.

Close window

Ariele Viacava Follis earned a Batchelor’s degree in Organic Chemistry from the Universita’ di Pavia, Italy in 2004, followed by a PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Georgetown University (2009). At Georgetown, under mentorship by Dr. Steven Metallo he studied small molecules interactions with the intrinsically disordered oncogenic transcription factor c-Myc. From 2009 until 2016 Ariele was a Postdoctoral researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Dr. Richard Kriwacki’s group where he studied molecular mechanisms of apoptotic regulation by p53 and BCL2 family proteins using NMR spectroscopy. Since 2017 Ariele has worked at EMD Serono with focus on structural biology, biophysics and molecular modelling. Through his career Ariele has authored over 20 research articles including first author publications in Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, Molecular Cell.

Close window

Daniel Wyss is currently a Senior Principal Scientist and BioNMR Team Lead in Computational and Structural Chemistry at Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA. He co-leads the Fragment-Based Lead Discovery (FBLD) efforts in the organization and his team applies structural biophysics methods to support drug discovery across a wide variety of modality platforms. Daniel holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and carried out post-doctoral research at Harvard Medical School. Before joining Merck, Daniel worked in various functions at Procept, Inc. (Immunology & Infectious Disease) and at the Schering-Plough Research Institute (Drug Discovery across Therapy Areas).

Close window

Kenneth Borrelli, PhD is a Senior Principal Scientist at Schrodinger, Inc in New York, USA. Schrödinger’s industry-leading computational platform to accelerate drug discovery is deployed by leading biopharmaceutical and industrial companies, academic institutions, and government laboratories worldwide. Schrödinger is using its platform to advance a pipeline of drug discovery programs including collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, co-founded biotech companies and internal programs. Dr Borrelli manages a research and development group at Schrodinger tasked with pushing the boundaries of structure-based drug discovery. His research interests include cryo-EM model refinement, homology modeling and ADMET modeling.

Close window

As a trained biochemist, my main function within the Structural Biology group has been to deliver high quality proteins for drug discovery applications (assay, immunization campaign or structural studies). After working for many years on soluble targets using crystallography, I have been more recently focused on the structural biology of membrane proteins: in order to enable these high value targets for structure-based drug design, I have been using cryo-EM. In parallel, I have also been interested in understanding the function and activation mechanism of these channels using modulators such as agonists.

Close window

Professor Sexton is a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Director of the ARC Centre for Cryo-electron Microscopy of Membrane Proteins (www.ccemmp.org). He is a leader in the study of GPCRs, biased agonism, on allosteric interactions between GPCRs and other proteins, and small molecule ligands. More recently, his team has been at the forefront of the application of cryo-EM to elucidation of the structure and dynamics of GPCRs. Prof. Sexton’s awards include the ASCEPT Lecturer award, Endocrine Society of Australia Senior Plenary award, Rand Medal (ASCEPT), Vane Medal (British Pharmacological Society (BPS)), and the GSK Research Excellence award. Prof. Sexton is a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher, a corresponding member of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology Committee on Receptor Nomenclature and Drug Classification, a member of the Faculty of 1000 (Molecular Pharmacology division) and an elected Fellow of the BPS.

Close window

Dr. Corey Strickland received his Ph.D. from Cornell University and Joined Merck Structural Chemistry, Kenilworth in 1995.  He is currently a Sr. Principal Scientist, Structural Chemistry and is head of cryoEM and Structural Chemistry Sourcing.   Corey’s work at Merck has spanned multiple disease areas and ranged from lead identification to process development. His research interests include X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, bioNMR, structure and fragment-based drug discovery. His current focus is on expanding the role and impact of cryoEM on the Merck pipeline. Corey is an alumnus of The Pennsylvania State University.

Close window

Yuliya studied chemistry at the Technical University (TUM) in beautiful Munich, Bavaria - with study and research stays in Ireland and Sweden. Following an internship in the automation team in the Biopharmaceutical Department at Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany, Yuliya joined Frank von Delft’s group at the University of Oxford in October 2017 as a DPhil student. The focus of her work was quantification of crystallographic fragment hits and their progression into potent binders. Recently, Yuliya completed her DPhil and has now joined the Bio Structure and Biophysics unit at Sanofi in France.

Close window

Alessandra Feoli received her Master of Science degree in “Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology” in 2011 at the University of Salerno. Her research thesis, performed at the Oncology Research Center (CROM) of “National Cancer Institute of Naples (INT)- Fondazione G. Pascale” was focused on the mutational analysis of EGFR gene in non-small cell lung cancer, under the supervision of M.D. Nicola Normanno. In 2012 she spent 3 months at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany) in the laboratory of Prof. Axel Imhof for the COST action "Epigenetics: From Bench to Bedside." In 2015 she spent six months as visiting scientist at Nanotemper technologies in Munich, where she deepens her knowledge in MST and nanoDSF. In 2016 she obtained her Ph.D in Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of Salerno under the supervision of Prof. Gianluca Sbardella discussing a thesis entitled: “Biomolecular and biophysical approaches to interrogate epigenetic targets: a platform for drug discovery.” From 2016, she is Postdoc at University of Salerno working on different biochemical and biophysical techniques for the identification of new modulators of epigenetic targets.

Close window

Dr. Volker Gatterdam studied chemistry in the beautiful city of Marburg in Germany. He holds a doctoral degree with summa cum laude in biochemistry from the University of Frankfurt where he laid a solid foundation for his scientific interests. His work is focused on the chemical modifications of surfaces for the design and fabrication of biosensors. His interest in the fascinating technology of focal molography started during his PostDoc in Prof. Janos Vörös´group at ETH Zurich. His continuous passion for the technology led him to be one of the co-founders of lino Biotech.

Close window

Dr. Reto Horst is a Principal Scientist in the Structural and Molecular Sciences group at Pfizer in Groton, CT. He is developing and applying cutting edge NMR methods to identify and validate hits from various screening funnels and to characterize protein–ligand interactions. Dr. Horst has guided fragment-based drug discovery efforts in various disease areas and made key contributions to several discovery projects. Dr. Horst obtained a diploma (MSc) in Physics and a PhD in Biophysics under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Dr. Kurt Wuthrich at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. Before joining Pfizer in 2012, he was a Staff Scientist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA, where his research was focused on studying GPCR signalling pathways and chaperonin-assisted protein folding by solution state NMR spectroscopy, resulting in more than 30 peer-reviewed publications that appeared in Tier 1 journals including Cell, Science and PNAS.

Close window

William C. K. Pomerantz, Associate Professor of Chemistry, University of Minnesota. Prof. Pomerantz received his B.S. in chemistry from Ithaca College in 2002, followed by a Fulbright Fellowship at ETH, Zurich with Professors François Diederich and Jack Dunitz. He obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry under Professors Sam Gellman and Nick Abbott at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a postdoctoral fellow under Prof. Anna Mapp at the University of Michigan. He joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Minnesota in 2012. He is currently a McKnight Presidential Fellow. His research develops chemical biology and medicinal chemistry approaches to modulate protein-protein interactions. Protein-Observed Fluorine NMR (PrOF NMR) is one such tool in his lab that is being developed for fragment-based ligand discovery, and has been applied towards inhibiting epigenetic protein complexes. Prof. Pomerantz is currently the global council co-chair for the International Chemical Biology Society and Early Career Board Member for ACS Med. Chem. Lett.

Close window

Prof. Strick has carried out pioneering work in the field of single-molecule biophysics and continues to investigate fundamental molecular processes such as DNA transcription, replication and repair. In parallel he develops novel instruments and molecular substrates to be used in such assays, with the aim of making single-molecule approaches as widely applicable to as many different systems as possible. Recent developments now make it possible to use single-molecule measurements to directly charcterize drug-protein and protein-protein interactions in real-time, providing unique new insights into their modes of association and dissociation.

Close window

Ben has spent his 14 year career with MiTeGen, driving business, operations, and product development. His understanding of the company’s and industry’s needs has allowed him to play a critical role in the rapid growth of MiTeGen’s international reputation. With expertise in customer relations, product-line management, industry innovation, and operations, Ben provided a critical leadership role in the development of nearly all aspects of MiTeGen. In addition, his expertise in cryo-EM and X-ray Crystallography methods development and developing technologies for high-throughput sample preparation, vitrification, and cryogenic storage and transport led to tools and methods that are utilized world-wide to further our understanding of the molecular structures of everything from basic materials to viruses. Ben graduated with honors in Physics from SUNY at Geneseo, and was inducted into the National Physics Honors Society.

Close window

Dr. Corey Strickland received his Ph.D. from Cornell University and Joined Merck Structural Chemistry, Kenilworth in 1995.  He is currently a Sr. Principal Scientist, Structural Chemistry and is head of cryoEM and Structural Chemistry Sourcing.   Corey’s work at Merck has spanned multiple disease areas and ranged from lead identification to process development. His research interests include X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, bioNMR, structure and fragment-based drug discovery. His current focus is on expanding the role and impact of cryoEM on the Merck pipeline. Corey is an alumnus of The Pennsylvania State University.

Close window

Denis earned his M.Sc. in biological crystallography and NMR at the Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg, France). His Ph.D. in protein X-ray crystallography (with Dr. Jean-Paul Renaud and Dr. Dino Moras at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology, Strasbourg, France, in collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb) led to the publication of pioneering structures in the PPAR family of nuclear receptors. In 2003 Denis built structural biology and biophysics groups and launched the research services business of AliX. In that capacity he has been instrumental in building a sound client base including major pharmaceutical companies; establishing a reputation for scientific excellence and reliability; and in technical improvements though internal and external innovations. Denis was appointed CEO of AliX in 2008 and has been CEO of NovAliX since its inception. He has been instrumental in the implementation of Novalix’ cryo-electron microscopy platform in 2015 and its subsequent development with a strong focus for the use of cryoEM in structure-based drug design.

Close window