Confirmed Speakers

Uwe Grether received his Diploma degree in Chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, where he subsequently earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Professor Herbert Waldmann in 2000. After that, he joined Professor James D. White’s group at Oregon State University for his postdoctoral research. In 2001, Dr. Grether started at the Pharma Research and Early Development unit of F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. in Basel, Switzerland. He has a long standing professional experience as project team leader in drug discovery and development reaching advanced stages up to phase 3 clinical trials with multiple new molecular entities. Dr. Grether has profound knowledge on different target classes, a broad variety of indications, chemical biology, and expertise in due diligences. He has led academic as well as industrial external collaborations and is an intrapreneur of novel technologies for project and platform applications. Dr. Grether is co-author of more than 150 patents, research publications and book chapters. His research interests include medicinal chemistry, late stage functionalization and chemical probes focusing on holistic approaches toward a clinical end-goal.

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Dr Van Hijfte holds a PhD degree in Chemistry from Gent University (1984, Belgium) with Prof. M. Vandewalle, and finalized his academic training by a two-year post-doctoral stay at UCSB with Prof. RD. Little. He started his industrial career as a medicinal chemist at Merrell Dow in 1986 in Strasbourg, France, where he progressed to head of the medicinal chemistry by the time the site had become part of Sanofi in 1998. In 2002 he moved to Janssen, J&J, first as Research Director of their R&D site in Val de Reuil, France, before taking on the role of Senior Director, Head of Medicinal Chemistry EU, at Janssen Research & Development, with responsibility for Europeanbased medicinal chemistry, analytical technologies, and ADMET. During this tenure, Luc was privileged to contribute to several successful projects, with numerous programs entering into clinical development in the areas of neurosciences, oncology, and infectious diseases. In 2012 Dr Van Hijfte became CSO of NovAliX, Illkirch, France, before moving in 2017 to his actual position of Sr VP Medicinal Chemistry at Symeres, where he oversees a team of approx. 80 chemists executing medicinal chemistry activities for clients worldwide. Dr Van Hijfte has been the Vice-President of the French Medicinal Chemistry Society (SCT) in 2015-16, President of the SCT 2017-18, and is currently member of the Executive Committee of the EFMC. In 2018, he has been elected and named member of the “Académie Nationale de Pharmacie” in France, for his multiple contributions to pharmaceutical developments.

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Former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, Boris Vauzeilles prepared his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Pierre Sinaÿ. He then joined Prof. Julius Rebek, Jr. at MIT (Cambridge, Massachussets), for a post-doctoral experience. The group soon moved to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, where Julius Rebek was promoted as Director of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology. Boris Vauzeilles then returned to France as a CNRS researcher (Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d’Orsay, Université Paris-Saclay). He finally joined the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles in Gif-sur-Yvette, in 2012, where he instigated the Department of Chemical Biology. He is also the co-founder of a startup company, Diamidex, and was awarded, together with his group, the Prix La Recherche in 2015. Since early 2020, he is the Director of Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (ICSN) and President of SCF-ChemBio, the new Chemical Biology Group from the French Chemical Society. SCF-ChemBio joined the European Federation for Medicinal chemistry and Chemical biology (EFMC).

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Sebastian Essig is currently Director for Chemical Biology in the Life Science Technology Department of Bayer Pharmaceuticals. He studied Biology and Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg and received his PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 2013. He then joined the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge (U.K.) as postdoctoral researcher to focus on his strong interests in Chemical Biology and Synthetic Biology. In 2016 he joint Bayer as lab head in the Medicinal Chemistry department where he worked over the past years on several projects in the fields of cardiovascular diseases and oncology. He was involved in Bayer FXIa inhibitor program which is currently entering clinical phase III. Since 2018 Sebastian has been coordinating the activities of the Chemical Biology Team at Bayer, aiming at deeper biological characterization of drug discovery assets and the expansion of the target and modality space via chemoproteomics and chemocentric drug discovery approaches. He has also established a covalent modality platform at Bayer and is coordinating the joint covalent library program with Bayer’s chemoproteomics platform company Vividion.

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Uwe Grether received his Diploma degree in Chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, where he subsequently earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Professor Herbert Waldmann in 2000. After that, he joined Professor James D. White’s group at Oregon State University for his postdoctoral research. In 2001, Dr. Grether started at the Pharma Research and Early Development unit of F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. in Basel, Switzerland. He has a long standing professional experience as project team leader in drug discovery and development reaching advanced stages up to phase 3 clinical trials with multiple new molecular entities. Dr. Grether has profound knowledge on different target classes, a broad variety of indications, chemical biology, and expertise in due diligences. He has led academic as well as industrial external collaborations and is an intrapreneur of novel technologies for project and platform applications. Dr. Grether is co-author of more than 150 patents, research publications and book chapters. His research interests include medicinal chemistry, late stage functionalization and chemical probes focusing on holistic approaches toward a clinical end-goal.

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Dr Van Hijfte holds a PhD degree in Chemistry from Gent University (1984, Belgium) with Prof. M. Vandewalle, and finalized his academic training by a two-year post-doctoral stay at UCSB with Prof. RD. Little. He started his industrial career as a medicinal chemist at Merrell Dow in 1986 in Strasbourg, France, where he progressed to head of the medicinal chemistry by the time the site had become part of Sanofi in 1998. In 2002 he moved to Janssen, J&J, first as Research Director of their R&D site in Val de Reuil, France, before taking on the role of Senior Director, Head of Medicinal Chemistry EU, at Janssen Research & Development, with responsibility for Europeanbased medicinal chemistry, analytical technologies, and ADMET. During this tenure, Luc was privileged to contribute to several successful projects, with numerous programs entering into clinical development in the areas of neurosciences, oncology, and infectious diseases. In 2012 Dr Van Hijfte became CSO of NovAliX, Illkirch, France, before moving in 2017 to his actual position of Sr VP Medicinal Chemistry at Symeres, where he oversees a team of approx. 80 chemists executing medicinal chemistry activities for clients worldwide. Dr Van Hijfte has been the Vice-President of the French Medicinal Chemistry Society (SCT) in 2015-16, President of the SCT 2017-18, and is currently member of the Executive Committee of the EFMC. In 2018, he has been elected and named member of the “Académie Nationale de Pharmacie” in France, for his multiple contributions to pharmaceutical developments.

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Former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, Boris Vauzeilles prepared his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Pierre Sinaÿ. He then joined Prof. Julius Rebek, Jr. at MIT (Cambridge, Massachussets), for a post-doctoral experience. The group soon moved to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, where Julius Rebek was promoted as Director of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology. Boris Vauzeilles then returned to France as a CNRS researcher (Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d’Orsay, Université Paris-Saclay). He finally joined the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles in Gif-sur-Yvette, in 2012, where he instigated the Department of Chemical Biology. He is also the co-founder of a startup company, Diamidex, and was awarded, together with his group, the Prix La Recherche in 2015. Since early 2020, he is the Director of Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (ICSN) and President of SCF-ChemBio, the new Chemical Biology Group from the French Chemical Society. SCF-ChemBio joined the European Federation for Medicinal chemistry and Chemical biology (EFMC).

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