Confirmed Speakers

Dr Hayley Binch is Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel. She obtained her PhD at University of Bristol, UK in the field of Organic Chemistry, followed by postdoctoral research at University of Hamburg, Germany and King’s College London. In 1998, she joined the Medicinal Chemistry department of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Oxford, focusing on kinase research in the field of Oncology. In 2006, she moved to Vertex San Diego working on ion channels in pain and cystic fibrosis. In 2016, she joined as a Section Head within Medicinal Chemistry at Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, and subsequently became Head of Medicinal Chemistry in 2017. At Roche, the Medicinal Chemistry department supports the design and synthesis of small molecules for Immunology, Infectious Diseases, Neuroscience, Oncology, Ophthalmology and Rare Diseases.

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Dr Stephen Fesik obtained his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Connecticut and was a postdoc at Yale Medical School. After his postdoc, he joined Abbott Laboratories where he reached highest level of the scientific ladder and served as Divisional Vice President of Cancer Research. In 2009, he joined Vanderbilt as a professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Chemistry. In addition, he is the Orrin H. Ingram, II Chair in Cancer Research and a member of the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology, the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, and the Center for Structural Biology.

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Mark Murcko has directly contributed to nine marketed drugs spanning glaucoma, HIV, HCV, and CF.

Mark received his PhD in organic chemistry at Yale. He began his career at Merck, where he helped discover multiple clinical candidates, including dorzolamide, a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor for the treatment of glaucoma. Dorzolamide became the first marketed drug in pharmaceutical history to result from a structure-based drug design program.

Mark was a founding scientist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, joining in 1990, where he eventually became the chief technology officer and chair of the SAB. During his tenure he contributed to more than a dozen clinical candidates and all seven of Vertex's marketed drugs.

Since leaving Vertex in late 2011, Mark has helped ideate, launch, build, or disrupt more than 15 organizations working on diverse drug modalities and technologies. Notably, he is a founder, board member, and from 2016-2018 was the founding CSO at Relay Therapeutics. He is a Board member, strategic advisor, and from 2018-2021 was the founding CSO and Chief Innovation Officer at Dewpoint Therapeutics.

He is a co-author on more than 90 publications and a co-inventor on more than 50 issued patents.

Mark is a senior lecturer in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Gordon Research Conferences and the Board of Advisors of the Boston Museum of Science.

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Dr Aprile is an Assistant Professor and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow in the Department of Chemistry of Imperial College London. His research, which combines chemical biology and biophysics, focuses on the development of antibodies as research and clinical tools. In particular, Dr Aprile’s team applies integrative discovery methods to develop antibodies to investigate neurotoxic protein aggregates, called amyloids, which are a hallmark of many forms of dementia. Previously, he was a Senior Research Fellow of the Alzheimer's Society UK at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge, where he investigated protein self-assembly in the context of neurodegenerative diseases. Dr Aprile obtained his PhD at the Department of Biotechnology and Biosciences at the University of Milano-Bicocca.

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Luc Brunsveld (1975) is chemical biologists specialized in protein-protein interactions and drug discovery. He obtained a PhD in 2001 with Prof. Bert Meijer from Eindhoven University of Technology. Subsequently, he was postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Herbert Waldmann at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology (MPI, Dortmund, Germany) working on Rab and Ras protein semi-synthesis. After that, he was group leader in medicinal chemistry at Organon (Oss, the Netherlands, now Merck). In 2005, he started a research group at the MPI in Dortmund, working on supramolecular chemical biology, and subsequently also became group leader at the Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society, working on protein-protein interactions. In 2008, he moved to TU/e where he was appointed Full Professor of Chemical Biology in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. His current research involves developing novel drug discovery concepts for “undruggable” proteins and drug discovery within biomolecular condensates. Brunsveld has received numerous appealing grants, among which ERC Starting, Proof of Concept, and Advanced grants (2008, 2010, and 2023 respectively) and the NWO Vici grant (2015). He was awarded the NVBMB Award of the Dutch Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2010. the Gold Medal of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society KNCV in 2013, and the Leadership in Excellence Award from the TU Eindhoven (2023). In 2022 Luc was elected as member of the KNAW (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences). Together with Christian Ottmann (TU/e) and Michelle Arkin (UCSF), he is co-founder of Ambagon Therapeutics.

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Peter Buijnsters finished his master’s degree at the University of Nijmegen in 1993 and received his Ph.D. at the same university in 1999. His research was done in the group of Prof. R.J.M Nolte and Prof. B. Zwanenburg, where he acquired expertise in supramolecular chemistry and synthesis. That same year, he joined Janssen R&D, where he assumed a team leader position leading early and late-stage projects in the oncology and neuroscience therapeutic areas. Currently, he is a principal scientist and head of the parallel medicinal chemistry groups of Beerse, Belgium, and Toledo, Spain

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Stepan Chuprakov is a synthetic organic chemist by training with over ten years of experience in the antibody-drug conjugates space. At Catalent Biologics – Emeryville, CA (formerly Redwood Bioscience) Stepan drives innovation, design, and synthesis of novel drug-linkers to facilitate the development of best-in-class therapeutic ADCs. He is an inventor on multiple patents related to Catalent’s SMARTag® technology encompassing state-of-the-art linkers, bioconjugation chemistries, and payloads for ADCs. Prior to joining Catalent, Stepan held scientist positions at Ambrx, Inc. and Scripps Research. He received his PhD degree in Chemistry from University of Illinois at Chicago.

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Dr. Melissa Grenier-Davies is a Principal Investigator in the Encoded Technologies group at GSK in Cambridge, MA which she joined in 2019. She completed her PhD in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania under the direction of Prof. Amos B. Smith, III. At GSK, Melissa is a leader within a team focused on the design and delivery of novel DNA-encoded libraries to expand the encoded technologies platform and a GSK Fellow. Melissa is the vice-chair of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Young Medicinal Chemists Committee (YMCC) and on the Early Career Board for the ACS Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Melissa was honored by the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry with an Early Career Investigator Award in 2023.

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Tom N. Grossmann is Professor of Organic Chemistry and holds the Chair of Biomimetic Chemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam since 2016. He is also a cofounder of the university spin-off Incircular BV. Tom obtained his PhD at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the group of Oliver Seitz and then joined Gregory L. Verdine's lab at the Harvard University for postdoctoral research in 2009. Tom started as a group leader at the Chemical Genomics Centre and the Technical University in Dortmund before he moved to Amsterdam.

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Ryuji earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from North Dakota State University. After postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he joined Chugai Pharmaceutical. He is currently a group head of discovery chemistry department at Chugai Pharmaceutical and managing number of drug discovery projects associated with macrocyclic peptides.

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Jenna L. Jeffrey studied chemistry at the University of Oregon prior to pursuing her doctoral studies under the direction of Professor Richmond Sarpong at UC Berkeley. Following a National Institutes of Health post-doctoral fellowship with Professor David W. C. MacMillan at Princeton University, Jenna joined the Drug Discovery department at Arcus Biosciences in 2016. Jenna is currently Director of Chemistry in the Drug Discovery group at Arcus

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Lyn Jones completed PhD studies in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Nottingham, before starting his postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, California) in chemical biology. He joined Pfizer (Sandwich, UK) as a medicinal chemistry team leader, eventually becoming Head of Chemical Biology and Lead Discovery Technologies. He transferred to Pfizer Cambridge, MA to become Head of Rare Disease Chemistry and Head of Chemical Biology. He then helped build Jnana Therapeutics as Head of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, before moving to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston as Director of the Center for Protein Degradation. His research interests include the creation and application of chemistry-based technologies to advance therapeutic target discovery and to accelerate drug development. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Society of Biology, and the Linnean Society, and serves on the editorial board of the journal RSC Medicinal Chemistry and the board of the Medicinal and Bioorganic Chemistry Foundation.

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Markus Klein is Principal Scientist, laboratory head & co-project lead in the Medicinal Chemistry & Drug Design Department at Merck Healthcare KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Markus leads drug discovery projects and supports projects with his expertise in drug design & synthesis. He studied Theology and Chemistry at Philipps University Marburg and Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and he received his PhD in Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Professor Gernot Boche. Before moving into pharmaceutical research, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in liquid crystal research at Merck KGaA in Darmstadt. In recent years, his research was mainly focused on the identification and optimization of small molecules to modulate and inhibit oncological targets covering various classes such as proteases, kinases, helicases etc. In the immunoproteasome inhibitor project team, Markus had a leading role in the optimization and development of M3258, which entered clinical trials in 2019.

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Dr H. Rachel Lagiakos is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Therapeutics Group at Schrodinger which she joined in 2018. She completed her PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry at Monash University and began her medicinal chemistry career at Cancer Therapeutics (CTx) in Melbourne, Australia in 2012. At CTx, Rachel’s contributions to pioneering work drugging novel epigenetic targets led to a first-in-class asset in the clinic targeting ER+ breast cancer, including patients refractory to endocrine therapy. Inspiring her move to Schrodinger, Rachel’s interests are in the application of in silico technologies to accelerate the drug discovery process. She currently leads a talented team of multi-disciplinary scientists dedicated to discovering drugs for neurodegenerative disease. Outside of work, Rachel’s commitment to educational outreach resulted in the conception and organization of a highly successful multi-day medicinal chemistry workshop and the delivery of recurring lectures at the Gordon Research Seminar on Medicinal Chemistry and at Drew University’s Residential School on Medicinal Chemistry. She is an active voice for diversity and inclusion in the Sciences. Some of Rachel’s proudest accolades include recognition as a 2012 SciFinder Future Leader in Chemistry; the 2017 Greg Roth Award at the Gordon Research Conference on Medicinal Chemistry, awarded to a promising young medicinal chemist; and the 2023 Philip Portoghese Journal of Medicinal Chemistry Early Career Lectureship Award for her contributions to the field of medicinal chemistry.

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Maria João Matos completed her studies in Medicinal Chemistry in Portugal, Italy and Spain, under the supervision of Prof. Eugenio Uriarte, Prof. Gianni Podda and Prof. Fernanda Borges, before moving to the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) as postdoctoral fellow in 2015, to work in Chemical Biology in the group of Prof. Gonçalo Bernardes. Since 2023, Maria is Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), leading an enthusiastic group of undergraduate and PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers, working on new tools for drug design, discovery and delivery, particularly in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. Maria established her scientific career in fruitful national and international collaborations with academic and industrial partners. Maria is one of the researchers within the 2% of the most cited scientists in the world, according to the Stanford University ranking. More details: https://mariacmatos.wixsite.com/website

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KEVIN D. MOELLER joined the chemistry faculty at Washington University in St. Louis in 1987 where he is now Professor of Chemistry. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 25, 1958, earned a BA degree in Chemistry from the University of California – Santa Barbara in 1980, and then his Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry (Professor R. Daniel Little) from the same institution in 1985. He was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (Professor Barry M. Trost) from 1985 to 1987. Professor Moeller’s independent research primarily focuses on how the interplay between electrochemistry, physical organic chemistry, and synthesis can be used to address a variety of topics. His group has explored the chemistry of highly reactive radical cation intermediates in the context of exploiting electrochemistry as a method for triggering unique synthetic transformations, they have examined the use of modern synthetic chemistry as a method for building complex molecular surfaces on microelectrode arrays, and they have engaged in the design and synthesis of chemical probes for examining and mitigating the reactivity of G-protein signaling pathways. His work continues to play a significant role in defining for the synthetic chemistry community how they can think about and take full advantage of electrochemical methods. The Moeller group’s research is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health and has led to the publication of over 165 papers and the presentation of over 300 talks and invited lectures. Professor Moeller has guided 50 students to their Ph.D. degrees and taught over 6,600 students in his courses. He has received Washington University’s Student Union Professor of the Year Award, the Washington University Arts and Sciences Excellence in Research Award, Washington University’s “Unsung Hero” award for his contributions to undergraduate education, the American Chemical Society’s St. Louis Award, the Manuel M. Baizer Award for Organic and Biological Electrochemistry from the Electrochemical Society, the ACS Midwest Award, the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar – Late Stage Career Award, and the Jaroslav Heyrovsky Prize for Molecular Electrochemistry from the International Society for Electrochemistry. Professor Moeller served at the National Science Foundation as a Program Director for the Chemical Synthesis and Chemical Structure, Dynamics, and Mechanism B Programs from 2016-2017 and as the Program Lead for the Chemical Synthesis Program from 2017-2018.

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Giulia Palermo is a computational biophysicist, Associate Professor at the University of California Riverside in the Department of Bioengineering and Chemistry. She is a native of Italy where she earned her PhD in 2013 from the Italian Institute of Technology working with Dr. Marco De Vivo. Her graduate studies led to more than 10 first-author papers, drawing on quantum chemistry and mixed quantum-classical methods to explore the mechanistic function of a number of enzymes. During her two-year post-doc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in the group of Prof. Ursula Rothlisberger, she initiated studies of allostery in proteins and nucleic acids, focusing on chromatin drug development and on the mechanism of RNA splicing by the spliceosome. In 2016, she was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation (NSF) post-doctoral fellowship to join the group of Prof. J. Andrew McCammon at the University of California San Diego. At UCSD, she worked on novel multiscale approaches and enhanced simulations to enable studying increasingly realistic biological systems obtained through cryo-EM and tomography. Her interests focus on understanding dynamics and mechanisms of novel CRISPR-Cas gene-editing systems that are transformative for life sciences.

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Tracey Pirali is full professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Piemonte Orientale. After the degree in pharmacy in 2004, she gained her PhD under the guidance of Prof. Gian Cesare Tron. She joined the group of prof. Jieping Zhu (Paris, CNRS) and of prof. Michael Greaney (Edinburgh, School of Chemistry) as a visiting scientist. Since 2013, her laboratory has been active in the field of drug discovery and in the translation of academic research into industrial application, with a focus on oncology, dermatology and rare diseases. She is particularly interested in the use of deuterium, protein degraders, soft drugs and multicomponent reactions and in their application in drug discovery. In 2016 she co-founded ChemICare, a spin-off company committed to the development of calcium channel modulators for the treatment of rare genetic diseases: the most advanced candidate has received two orphan designations from EMA. In 2012 she was awarded the Farmindustria Prize by the Italian Chemical Society. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European School of Medicinal Chemistry and coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus EMOTION. She is author of more than 60 papers and inventor of five patents.

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Floris van Delft graduated in organic chemistry from Leiden University (1996, with honors). After a post-doctoral stay at the Scripps Research Institute (San Diego, USA), he held professorship positions at the University of Amsterdam (1998-1999), Radboud University Nijmegen (2000-2013) and Wageningen University (2015–2020), with his research focused primarily on click chemistry, carbohydrate chemistry and protein conjugation technologies. In 2010, Floris co-founded Synaffix, and he became the full-time chief scientific officer (CSO) for in 2014. He has been the driving force behind the scientific innovations that form the basis of Synaffix’ best-in-class antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for targeted cancer therapy. Floris has (co)authored >150 peer-reviewed publications and is the (co)inventor of >35 patents.

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Johan Veerman studied at the University of Amsterdam and obtained a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry in the area of solid phase chemistry under the supervision of Professors Henk Hiemstra and Floris Rutjes. He then joined Symeres as a Senior Scientist, progressing to a position as Senior Group Leader Medicinal Chemistry over the years. In this role he was responsible for the project management of multiple teams of (medicinal) chemists in hit to lead campaigns in several disease areas. After that, he joined ZoBio where he is now the head of Chemistry. In this role, he is responsible for the development and maintenance of the fragment library, project management and medicinal chemistry support in fragment hit finding and evolution in integrated projects.

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Alison Woolford studied at Cambridge University under the tutelage of Prof Steve Ley gaining a PhD in organic synthesis. She joined Astex early in its history and has grown along with the company, progressing from a post graduate chemist to a project leader in the intervening years. She is passionate about fragment based design and can draw on a wealth of invaluable experience in this area having helped deliver three separate drugs to clinical trials.

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Damian W. Young, Ph.D. is the Robert A. Welch Chair in Science and Associate Director of the Center for Drug Discovery at Baylor College of Medicine. He additionally holds faculty appointments as Associate Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology and Pathology and Immunology. Dr. Young’s research is focused on applying principles of modern synthetic organic chemistry to constructing collections of biologically active small molecules for drug discovery. He has applied concepts related to generating molecular diversity within groups of small molecules for modulating a variety of disease-associated biological targets. This has led to the development of chemical probes for interrogating biology and clinical leads for therapeutics. His lab was among the first to apply the principles of diversity generation to fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) and DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) platforms.

Dr. Young received a B.S. in chemistry from Howard University and then worked as a process chemist at Trimeris Inc. on the HIV drug enfuvirtide. He received a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry under the direction of Prof. Daniel Comins at North Carolina State University and subsequently pursued postdoctoral studies in the lab of Prof. Stuart Schreiber at Harvard University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Prior to joining Baylor, he was Group Leader within the Chemical Biology Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a Project Leader for the Harvard/Broad Centers of Excellence in Methodology and Library Development (CMLD).

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Salvatore Di Maro is associate professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. He earned his degree in Medicinal Chemistry in 2005 and subsequently pursued his Ph.D. under the guidance of Professor Paolo Grieco at the University of Naples “Federico II”. From 2006 to 2008, he joined the group of prof. Jung-Mo Ahn at the University of Texas at Dallas as a visiting scientist. Since 2015, his laboratory is active in the development and application of advanced peptide synthesis techniques to identify new antitumor candidate drugs. Prof. Di Maro’s research covers a broad spectrum of mechanisms, ranging from designing ligands that target cell membrane receptors (such as CXCR4 and integrin) to developing inhibitors of protein-protein interactions (TRF2/Apollo, MDM2/p53, BAX). In 2022 he co-founded CIRCE, a start-up company dedicated to pioneering novel platforms for the development of epigenetic prodrugs aimed at anticancer intervention. In 2019 he was awarded best young researcher in medicinal chemistry (Medicinal Chemistry Division prize) by the Italian Chemical Society and best young researcher in peptide chemistry (“Vittorio Espramer prize”) by the Italian Peptide Society. Prof. Di Maro is author of 58 papers and inventor of two patents.

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Rita Maria Concetta Di Martino is a researcher fellow in Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Piemonte Orientale. After the Master’s Degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies, she obtained her doctorate in Medicinal Chemistry from the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna in 2016. Then, she joined the research group of Prof. Andrea Cavalli at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa as a postdoctoral fellow to eventually go back to an academic position at the University of Piemonte Orientale. During her Ph.D. and postdoctoral research, she has been involved in several computer-assisted drug discovery projects focused on the development of multitarget-directed ligands to tackle neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders as well as cancer. Since 2022, within the research group of Prof. Tracey Pirali at the University of Piemonte Orientale, her research activity has been focused on the application of multicomponent reactions, protein degraders, soft drugs and deuterium in drug discovery, with a focus on oncology, rare diseases and neuropathic pain.

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Khaled holds a Bachelor's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Utrecht University (2015-2018) and pursued an international master's program in Innovative Medicine through the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and Uppsala University, Sweden (2018-2020). Currently a third-year PhD candidate at Leiden University, Netherlands, under the supervision of Prof. Laura Heitman (since 2021). Khaled carried out internships in the Drug Design Group at the University of Groningen, where he focused on utilizing multicomponent chemistry for degrader development. Additionally, he explored novel photoredox catalytic methods for the synthesis of bioactive molecules at Bayer AG, Wuppertal, Germany. His research focus lies in the discovery and development of novel modalities targeting class A G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs).

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Franco Faucher 5th year PhD Student in Chemistry in Matthew Bogyo’s Lab at Stanford University Department of Pathology. The main focus of his PhD. has been the development of peptide therapeutics and diagnostics for cancer therapy and imaging. He is looking to join the biopharmaceutical industry and become an expert in peptide-based therapeutics.

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Dr Efthymios Gavriil obtained his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry in 2018 from the University of Athens, working on novel substituted purine isosters as anti-cancer agents. During his 3-year postdoc at the Drug Discovery Unit of Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, he contributed to the progression of two kinase inhibition projects at the hit-to-lead and lead optimisation stages. In 2022, he joined Prof. Ed Tate’s group at Imperial College London as a Research Associate in Medicinal Chemistry and Cancer Drug Discovery. He is currently working on several projects in the fields of oncology, immunology and neglected tropical diseases. Efthymios is also a leading member of The European Network for Postdocs in Cancer Research.

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Since her Ph.D., Imane’s scientific career has focused chiefly on studying biological targets involved in neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative diseases in terms of design, synthesis, and screening of molecules able to interact with biological targets for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. Later on, working as a researcher at the spin-off company of the University of Bari Biofordrug S.r.l., she was interested in developing potential PET radiotracers for in vivo imaging of P-glycoprotein (see WO2016174496). As a radiopharmaceutical quality control specialist for Beforpharma S.r.l. at the Nuclear Medicine of the Bari Hospital, she has contributed to developing cold kits for radiopharmaceuticals (see WO 2022/144764 A1). Nowadays, she is research fellow at the Department of Pharmacy-Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Bari and she is working at the development of antagonists for the P2X7 receptor as a therapeutic approach to address inflammation and a potential molecular imaging target.

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Philipp Janssen is a PhD Student in Computational Drug Design in the Lab of Prof. Oliver Koch at the University of Muenster. After receiving his M.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Sciences, he is currently dealing with Fragment-based Drug Design, particularly in integrating computational methods with hands-on medicinal chemistry. In doing so, he encountered the issue of unsociable fragments, which led him to design new, sociable fragment libraries with a chemistry-first perspective.

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Seino Jongkees is associate professor in the department of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences at VU Amsterdam. He received his PhD in 2013 from the University of British Columbia under prof. Stephen Withers, studying the mechanisms of carbohydrate-active enzymes, then proceeded to a JSPS post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Tokyo under prof. Hiroaki Suga, studying mRNA display of macrocyclic peptides. He started his independent career in a tenure-track position at Utrecht University in 2016, moving to a permanent position at VU Amsterdam in 2021. His research focuses on high throughput approaches for discovery of new peptide and peptidomimetic drug candidates, using a combination of mRNA display, genetic code reprogramming, and chemoselective peptide modification.

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Olga Kolodiazhna was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2014 she received PhD in biochemistry in the V.P. Kukhar Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry and Petrochemistry (IBOPC) of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She began working as a research chemist at Enamine corporation in 2014, where she contributed to the identification of innovative building blocks utilized in drug design. Synthesis of potentially biologically active compounds derived from natural sources, development of novel reagents and methods for asymmetric synthesis of organophosphorus compounds, and biocatalysts and chemo-catalysts are among Olga's research interests. She has authored over thirty scientific articles in collaboration. Since 2023, Olga has held the position of Chief Strategy Officer at Enamine(Kyiv, Ukraine).

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Valentina Noemi Madia received her PhD in Life Sciences at “Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy) in 2017 under the supervision of Prof. Costi, focusing her research on the design and synthesis of novel anti-HIV-1 agents. Then, she pursued postdoctoral studies at the Department of Chemistry and Technology of Drugs in the same university with the group of Prof. Di Santo, mainly working on the development of new heterocyclic derivatives as antiviral and antiretroviral agents. She is currently working as researcher in Medicinal Chemistry devoting her research on the design and synthesis of small molecules active against emerging viruses. Dr Madia is author of 42 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and inventor of one international patent.

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Dr Misale embarked on his academic journey at the University of Messina, where he earned his M.Sc. in 2006. Collaborating with Prof C. Scolastico from the University of Milan, he focused on synthesizing inhibitors of integrin ανβ3. Motivated by his passion for scientific exploration, he was awarded a PhD CR-UK fellowship and joined the Protein-Protein Interactions drug discovery research group at UCL London, where he obtained his PhD in 2011 working on the "Total synthesis of angucycline natural products to target PPIs." After a short staying at the biotech company Xenthion as Scientist in Cambridge (UK), in 2012 joined the group of Prof. Nuno Maulide as postdoctoral researcher at the Max-Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung. In 2014, he moved to Vienna University as Senior postdoctoral researcher. Over his postdoctoral studies, his research focused on the development of Pd- and Au-catalyzed enantioselective transformations. Since 2016, Dr Misale has brought his expertise to Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine as a medicinal chemist, where his contributions focus on identifying and developing clinical candidates across different therapeutic areas. With an unwavering dedication to scientific innovation, he actively collaborates with various academic institutions, aiming to push the boundaries of synthetic innovation and late-stage functionalization to integrate modern catalysis into medicinal chemistry programs and explore novel chemical spaces.

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Natalia Ortiz Zacarías completed her PhD in the field of Medicinal Chemistry at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR), Leiden University. Her PhD thesis was awarded the 2019-2020 best thesis prize from the KNCV-Medicinal Chemistry & Chemical Biology (MCCB). After her PhD, she continued working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at both the LACDR and Oncode Institute, focusing on novel pharmacological concepts to better target chemokine receptors in cancer. In 2021, she worked as Research Scientist in the startup ARTICA Therapeutics, focusing on the characterization of novel small-molecule drugs. In 2021 she also obtained a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for her project “Towards illuminating and modulating chemokine receptor fate”, which she is currently performing at the group of Prof. Heitman, at the LACDR and Oncode Institute.

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Full professor of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Milano), he also holds a permanent professorship at the Ecole Nationale Superieure (ENS) of Lyon (France). President of the MicrobiotaMi association (www.microbiotami.com), and Delegate of the Rector for the University of Innovation Foundation (www.u4i.it), an organism devoted to the valorization of innovation and to decisional support to University start-ups. Founder and head of scientific board of the academic spin-off CP2 Biotech (March 2020), whose focus is the valorization of new drug hits and the development of innovative therapeutic approaches to vaccine adjuvants and inflammatory diseases.

Research interests: drug discovery and development, chemical biology, in particular the use of small organic molecules to interrogate biological systems. His group developed and patented innovative modulators of the innate immunity receptor TLR4. Some of this compounds are in preclinical phase of development as vaccine adjuvants and a collaboration is ongoing with Croda/Avanti Lipids to enter the veterinary market. Other first-in-class drug leads against heart failure were discovered, in collaboration with the company Windtree (USA), now in clinical phase of development. Is group published more than 140 papers and he is inventor in more than 10 patents, he delivered more than 50 invited lectures to international congresses, H index = 37 (scopus), 42 (Google Scholar).

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Dr Rico Gerup Petersen is a Senior Scientist at Vipergen ApS. His responsibilities include screening data analysis, scientific communication, and partner relations. In addition, he is involved in the design of new DNA-encoded libraries. He previously worked for Swedish Biomimetics 3000 ApS (Copenhagen, DK) and Novo Nordisk A/S (Copenhagen, DK). Rico also completed a Post Doc at The Scripps Research Institute, USA. Rico holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry and a MSc Eng in Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from The Technical University of Denmark.

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Stefan joined AstraZeneca in 2016 as senior research scientist, where he was quickly promoted to associate principal scientist in 2017 and to director of medicinal chemistry in 2023. At AstraZeneca Stefan is working on innovative strategies to treat respiratory and immunology diseases from hit identification to clinical candidate selection across various target classes. These efforts resulted in the discovery of 2 clinical candidates, which are currently in pre-clinical development and phase 1, respectively. As part of the global chemistry leadership team, Stefan is the co-project leader of a strategic initiative to expand the druggable space of small molecule drug discovery. Additional to his project work Stefan has been supervising >10 international students to explore new frontiers in medicinal chemistry such as the discovery of novel functional groups for compound optimization and new synthetic methods suitable for automation and functionalization of peptides. He is the editor of two internal journals and co-organizer of two global AstraZeneca symposia to foster knowledge sharing across departments.

Before joining AstraZeneca Stefan completed his postdoc with Prof. Movassaghi at MIT (USA), where he successfully performed the total synthesis of two natural products. Stefan earned his Ph.D. with Prof. Carell at the University of Munich (Germany) working in epigenetics and new anti-cancer therapies.

Stefan has successfully led various academic collaborations, secured funding from international grants, and was invited to give presentations worldwide. Stefan gives annual lectures in the master program of Gothenburg University and is the author of 22 publications, which were cited more than 1100 times (h-index 15), one book chapter, and two patent applications.

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Irene is a fourth year PhD candidate at Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, Wageningen University & Research working under the supervision of Dr. Bauke Albada and Prof. Floris van Delft. Her research focusses on the development of antibody conjugates using (biogenic) tyrosine-based click chemistry from off-the-shelf antibodies. After her master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Sacred Heart College, India (2017-2019), Irene worked as a Project Assistant at Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad under the supervision of Dr. Sushabhan Sadhukhan developing cardioprotective mitochondria-targeting EGCG derivatives.

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Kim obtained his MSc degree in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen in 2019, where he was awarded the H. C. Ørsted Medal for study excellence as well as the Drug Research Academy/Lundbeck Foundation scholarship. Kim carried out his final year research project under the supervision of Professor Anders Bach and subsequently worked as a research assistant in Professor Bach’s group in collaboration with Professor Morten Sommer at the Technical University of Denmark. In 2020, Kim started his PhD research in chemistry under supervision of Professor Matthew Fuchter at Imperial College London.

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George Vandeveer developed a passion for chemistry in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina where he attended high school and carried this with him through obtaining his B.S. from North Carolina State University, then a M.S. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He built his synthetic organic chemistry skills over a 15-year career working for a series CRO’s and staffing agencies all along the east coast of the United States. His journeyman career as a chemist took him through a 6-year stint in the high pressure and catalysis labs at Eli Lilly based in Indianapolis, Indiana, which ultimately led him to his current role at Biogen’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In his 5 years with Biogen, George has excelled as a medicinal chemist on multiple programs and now leads the Parallel Medicinal Chemistry efforts.

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Clinton Veale is an Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town. He is the current head of the South African Chemical Institute organic chemistry division, and a Royal Society - African Academy of Sciences, FLAIR Fellow. He has a broad interest in organic chemistry, chemical biology and biophysical chemistry and its applications for exploring extracellular chemical space and Protein-Protein Interactions for drug discovery and medicinal chemistry.

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