演講嘉賓

Dr. Ruben Abagyan is a Professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, which he joined in 2009. He received his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in molecular physics at MPTI and MSU. At the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg he developed internal coordinate mechanics and structural docking approach (ICM) for modeling and docking. He received his tenure at New York University and Courant Institute of Mathematics and continued at the Novartis Institute and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Dr. Abagyan serves on international review panels for Institutes in Switzerland, UK, EU, and Hong Kong. He received CapCure awards, Princess Diana Award and medal in Sydney, Australia, American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Teacher of the Year award, and UCSD-SSPPS 'Faculty of the Year' awards. R.A. authored and co-authored 340 research papers and book chapters, with over 40,000 citations and H-index of 96. His research interests include computational structural biology, methods for structure prediction, docking screens, and cheminformatics, with a particular focus on computer-aided drug and target discovery. In addition to molecular profiles, he also studies the FDA clinical records and unexpected post-marketing side effects of therapeutics.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2

Arusha Acharyya is currently working as a Senior Scientist in the Mass Spectrometry & Biophysics Group in Merck, Rahway. She received her PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania where she worked on the development and applications of spectroscopic probes to elucidate structure-function-dynamics in biological macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. She worked as a postdoctoral research associate at MIT where she utilized microscopic tools to probe protein dynamics in the single molecule level, before joining the Biophysics team at Merck. She has co-authored 13 publications and 1 book chapter and continue to work on developing and utilizing biophysical workflows to support early-stage drug discovery.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

Emel Adaligil is a Senior Scientific Manager at Genentech where she leads macrocycle discovery and mRNA display platform. She received her PhD in chemistry from Tufts University where she developed peptide antibiotics composed of D-amino acids active against S. aureus and MRSA with the same action mechanism of vancomycin. Then, she completed her postdoc studies at Genentech working on developing cell-permeable macrocyclic peptides, structure elucidation of macrocyclic peptides by NMR spectroscopy, and computational methods and technology development of mRNA display platform.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Dr. Aggen has served as the Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry at Circle Pharma since 2020 and has over 25 years of experience in medicinal chemistry. Previously, he held positions at Revolution Medicines, Kodiak Biosciences, Achaogen, Chemocentryx, Gilead Sciences, Theravance, and Northeastern University. Dr. Aggen has led teams engaged in targeted drug discovery against multiple antibacterial and oncology targets, and his contributions include being an inventor of the aminoglycoside antibiotic Plazomicin, now marketed as Zemdri. He was awarded a doctorate in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of California, Irvine, where he studied under Prof. Richard Chamberlin. He also served in the US Marine Corps Reserves.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Bryce Allen, Ph.D. was the founding Head of Integrated Data Sciences at Silicon Therapeutics and played a key role in building the company from three employees to over one hundred, culminating in its acquisition by Roivant Sciences in 2021, driven in large part by the cutting edge computational platform. During that period he spearheaded the development and application of the computational platform to drug discovery projects. He played a leading role in the discovery and optimization of SNX281, a first-in-class small molecule STING agonist currently in phase I clinical trials, taking the program from an initial AI discovered hit to a clinical candidate in <3 years. Starting his career at the bench, Bryce has accumulated domain expertise across biology, medicinal chemistry, physics, and computer science enabling the development of practical computer-aided discovery to drive data-driven decision making in drug development programs. He holds an Adjunct Faculty appointment in The Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, and is the author of >30 publications and patents. Bryce was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and holds a Ph.D. in Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Helena Almqvist is a Senior Project Advisor at Pelago Bioscience, where she acts as a scientific liaison for key accounts and develops customized projects. With more than 15 years of experience in pre-clinical drug discovery, she joined the company in 2018 to accelerate the CETSA® HT screening platform and lead CETSA projects tailored to clients. Helena is an expert in assay development and screening, having worked in small and large pharma settings as well as a project manager at a national infrastructure. She played a crucial role in adapting the CETSA method for screening and executing the first primary screening campaign using CETSA .

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

Chad was raised in Los Angeles and later completed his BS at UC Berkeley in Chemical Biology. While there, he performed research with Professor Niren Murthy synthesizing redox and alkyne based warheads for use in point-of-care diagnostic biosensors. He later worked with Professor Daniel Nomura to synthesize covalent proximity-based degraders against a GTPase overexpressed in some cancer subtypes. Now, as a graduate student in Professor Michelle Arkin's lab at UCSF, Chad is engineering tools to monitor the conformation of Valosin Containing Protein with the hope of ultimately developing conformational modulators that can bias VCP's various functions in cells. Outside of lab, Chad enjoys cycling, exploring San Francisco, visiting thrift stores, and home improvement projects.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Angelo Andres is a Senior Scientist within the Chemical Biology & Proteomics group at AstraZeneca. Before embarking on his scientific journey he served in the GWOT with the U.S. Army. He then earned a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from The University of Kansas where he specialized in the development of cellular probes and assays to study live cell target engagement by small molecules. At AstraZeneca he collaborates across functions to develop lysosomal degradation modalities, generate synthetic probes to facilitate lead generation, and applies proteomics to support drug discovery programs across multiple therapeutic modalities spanning small molecules, degraders, and cell therapies.

• SC6: Chemical Biology for Covalent Drug Discovery, Phenotypic Screening, and Target Deconvolution
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Michelle Arkin is Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center. Her lab focuses on developing chemical probes and drug leads for novel targets, with a particular interest in protein-protein interactions and protein-degradation networks. Prior to UCSF, Michelle worked at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where she helped discover protein-protein interaction inhibitors for IL-2 and LFA-1 (lifitigrast, marketed by Novartis). She is a co-founder of Ambagon and Elgia Therapeutics.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Phil Baran was born in 1977 in Denville, New Jersey. He received his BS in Chemistry from NYU in 1997, his PhD at the Scripps Research Institute in 2001, and from 2001-2003, he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. His independent career began at Scripps in the summer of 2003. He currently holds the Darlene Shiley Chair in Chemistry. Phil has published over 200 scientific articles and has been the recipient of several ACS awards, such as the Corey (2015), Pure Chemistry (2010), Fresenius (2006), and Nobel Laureate Signature (2003), and several international distinctions, such as the Hirata Gold Medal and Mukaiyama Prize (Japan), the RSC award in Synthesis (UK), and the Sackler Prize (Israel). In 2013, he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow; in 2015, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 2016, he was awarded the Blavatnik National Award; and in 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He has delivered hundreds of lectures around the world and consults for numerous companies, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb (since late 2005), Boehringer-Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, DuPont and TEVA, and is a scientific advisory board member for Eisai, Abide, and AsymChem. In 2016, he was appointed as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society. He co-founded Sirenas Marine Discovery (2012) and Vividion Therapeutics (2016) and, in 2013, he co-authored The Portable Chemist’s Consultant, an interactive book published on the iBooks store along with his graduate class in Heterocyclic Chemistry (viewable for free by anyone on iTunes University). Outside of the lab, Phil enjoys spending time with his wife, Ana, and three young children, Lucia, Leah, and Manuel.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Dr. Belyanskaya is an accomplished scientific leader in the field of small molecule drug discovery and an expert in DNA encoded library technology. She has been an instrumental player in the discovery of the first DEL-sourced molecule to progress into clinical trials. For more than 20 years she has been working in the DEL field and has made a significant contribution to the development of this platform at Praecis Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, Anagenex Inc. She is passionate about DEL platform development and constantly publicizing this technology at scientific conferences and seminars. She has multiple publications in the field of DEL technology, has taught short courses on DEL, and works as a consultant for startup companies. Dr. Belyanskaya held senior positions in the leading cross-functional team at GSK and has served as a Vice President of Biology at Anagenex Inc. Currently, she is a co-founder and a member of the executive team at DEL Source Inc. (LinkedIn).

• SC9: DNA-Encoded Libraries

Hans-Peter Biemann has originated innovative discovery programs and applied emerging small molecule technologies during tenures in Genzyme’s and Sanofi’s Drug Discovery units. Contributions on preclinical and clinical agents have included partnerships with academic leaders and start-ups. Working across various disciplines (protein biochemistry, cell biology, structural biology, biophysics), Hans has conducted and led phenotypic, fragment-based, and HTS-based drug discovery. He established productive FBDD, high-res Cryo EM drug design, Affinity Selection Mass Spectrometry over the past 15 years at Sanofi/Genzyme. Prior to joining Genzyme in the 1990s, he completed a post doc in Daniel Koshland’s U.C. Berkeley group and trained in Raymond Erikson’s Harvard group (PhD). His B.S. was earned at Yale.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• SC4: Detecting Target Engagement: Technology Innovations

No bio available.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

25+ years of experience within Pfizer Research and Development focusing on target-ligand interactions using a variety of biophysical techniques. The earlier part of my career was spent was largely focused on protein NMR techniques to solve protein structures and evaluate ligand binding. In an effort to provide greater impacts, my efforts turned towards a variety of biosensing techniques (SPR, BLI, SPRm) to access binding interactions for targets across the Pfizer portfolio. With recent technology development, I have been able to apply these biophysical techniques to membrane proteins in the whole cell environment as well as in membrane preparations.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

Paul Brennan received his PhD in organic chemistry from UC Berkeley. Following post-doctoral research at Cambridge University, Paul spent eight years working in the pharmaceutical industry at Amgen and Pfizer. After leaving Pfizer in 2011, Paul joined the Structural Genomics Consortium at the University of Oxford and led the chemical probes discovery effort on epigenetic targets. After leaving the SGC in 2019, Paul was Head of Chemistry and then Chief Scientific Officer of the Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute where his research was focused on finding new treatments for dementia. In addition to dementia, over the course of his career, Paul has worked on discovering new medicines for cancer, incontinence, pain, rare diseases, and inflammation. Paul is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Director of the Centre for Medicines Discovery at the University of Oxford and a scientific advisor to the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. His research centre is focused on early medicines discovery for poorly treated diseases.

• SC6: Chemical Biology for Covalent Drug Discovery, Phenotypic Screening, and Target Deconvolution

John obtained his PhD from University of California, San Diego in Dr. Alexandra Newton’s laboratory, where he discovered a novel class of phosphatases that directly regulate AKT. John then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Tony Hunter’s laboratory at the Salk Institute. He joined the CRUK Manchester Institute as a group leader where his lab focused on identifying mechanisms to promote lung tumorigenesis. John then moved to the NCI and his research is focused on defining novel enzymes that act to suppress or promote tumorigenesis and in some cases can serve as novel targets for therapeutic intervention. The lab has several ongoing collaborations with pharmaceutical companies to investigate novel inhibitors targeting newly identified kinases implicated in cancer.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Jonathan began his career at Genetics Institute in 1990 developing immunoassays for use in pharmacokinetics and process development. Jon has over 30 years of experience in label free analysis of receptor ligand interactions and small molecule target binding associated with several respiratory and inflammatory disease areas. Currently, he is a principal scientist in the inflammation and Immunology drug discovery research unit at Pfizer in Cambridge Massachusetts. His current focus is on-cell target interaction analysis using SPRm. Jon received his MS in Biology from Harvard University.

• SC4: Detecting Target Engagement: Technology Innovations

Peter J. Brown is a medicinal chemist by training having received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Sheffield and performed postdoctoral research at Indiana University with Philip Magnus culminating in the total synthesis of (-)-Pleiomutine, a bis-indole alkaloid. Since joining the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) in Toronto in 2009, Peter has managed multiple chemical probe projects involving both academic and Pharma collaborators, making the SGC the recognized leader in Epigenetic Chemical Probe discovery. Recently Peter transferred to the SGC at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to manage antiviral probe discovery as part of an AViDD program. Prior to joining the SGC Peter spent nineteen years at GlaxoSmithKline in various roles, most recently Section Head, Medicinal Chemistry, and was focused on the early Hit-ID phase of Drug Discovery and finding tool compounds for the Nuclear Receptor family of proteins. Peter’s research interests include using HTS, target-focused arrays, DNA Encoded Libraries, and fragment-based methods to discover probes for novel targets.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Tauseef Butt received his PhD degree in Molecular Biology from The University of Glasgow, Scotland. He was a Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, before joining SmithKline (now GSK) Pharmaceuticals. He serves as President and CEO of Progenra. He was an Adjunct Professor in Biochemistry and Biophysics, at University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia, PA. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, Philadelphia. He has been instrumental in raising ~$120 million capital. He is active in numerous national and regional professional organizations, including several dedicated to biotechnology.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues: Beyond Oncology

Yong Cang is the Co-founder and CSO of Degron Therapeutics. He is a scientific leader in targeted protein degradation, ubiquitin ligase biology, and cancer immunotherapy with 30+ publications in top biomedical journals. Dr. Cang pioneers novel molecular glue degrader discovery strategies, with a focus on screening approach development and mechanistic understanding of interactions between molecular glue drugs, ubiquitin ligases, and neo-substrates. Dr. Cang is a professor and head of the Laboratory of Targeted Protein Degradation in the School of Life Science and Technology of ShanghaiTech University. He previously was an assistant professor in the NCI-designated Cancer Center of Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and a professor of Zhejiang University. Dr. Cang consulted for pharmaceutical industry and venture funds. Dr. Cang received a Bachelor of Science degree from Fudan University and a PhD in Molecular Genetics from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed his postdoctoral training with Professor Stephen Goff at Columbia University and HHMI.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Dr. Peter Canning is a Principal Scientist in the Protein Sciences group at CHARM Therapeutics and leads the Biophysics team. He earned his PhD in structural biology and has since gained extensive experience in protein sciences, structural biology and biophysics, working on a range of academic and industrial drug discovery programs at Oxford University, LifeArc and Charm Therapeutics. He specializes in applying high-throughput methods and automation to experimental work and data flows.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2

I earned my PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Hyderabad, India, where my doctoral research focused on the synthesis of natural product-inspired hybrid macrocycles. Following my doctoral studies, I pursued postdoctoral training in Dr. Young's research group at Baylor College of Medicine, where I specialized in creating SP3 rich heterocycles to develop 3D-enriched small molecule libraries for Fragment-Based Drug Discovery and DNA-encoded chemical library technology. Currently I am an Assistant Professor at the Center for Drug Discovery in the Department of Pathology & Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine. I lead the DNA-encoded chemical library platform at CDD and oversee hit validation and optimization.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

No bio available.

• Generative AI & Predictive Modeling

No bio available.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Henrik is a pioneer and scientific leader in the field of proteomics-based drug discovery with over 20 years of industry experience commercializing cutting-edge proteomics technologies. Henrik joined NEOsphere Biotechnologies from Evotec, where he served as Senior Vice President Science & Technology. In that role, he developed high-throughput, deep proteomics on automated, industrial-scale platforms and led global target discovery efforts for targeted protein degradation. Prior to that, Henrik was a group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and scientific founder of the proteomics company Kinaxo Biotechnologies. Henrik has a PhD in biochemistry from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and received his venia legendi from the Technical University of Munich, where he is also Professor of Biochemistry.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Dr. Ben Davis is a Research Fellow at Vernalis Research, a biotech company based in Cambridge UK which has been at the forefront of fragment-based approaches since 1998. An NMR spectroscopist and biophysicist by training, his current research focus is the development of biophysics and FBLD methods for challenging therapeutic targets and systems. Dr Davis studied for his PhD in protein folding and molecular interactions with Professor Alan Fersht at Cambridge University, and then studied the interactions of small molecules with proteins and RNA. He has over 20 years’ experience in the drug discovery industry. He has contributed to seven books over the last decade and is an author on more than forty scientific publications. He is a frequent speaker at scientific conferences and has been running FBLD training workshops since 2007.

• SC2: Fragment-Based Drug Design: Advancing Tools and Technologies

Tahnee Dening is a Principal Scientist in the Discovery Pharmaceutics group within the Synthetic Molecule Pharmaceutical Sciences Department at Genentech in South San Francisco. She received her PhD from the University of South Australia and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Kansas, prior to joining Genentech. Her research focuses on development and application of enabling formulations for challenging molecules and novel modalities, such as peptides, as well as characterizing and understanding peptide behavior in the gastrointestinal environment.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Anwesha Dey is a Director and Distinguished Scientist in the Discovery Oncology Department at Genentech. Prior to this position, she held postdoctoral research fellowships in the laboratory of Vishva Dixit at Genentech and at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), A*STAR, Singapore, in the laboratory of Sir David Lane. Her scientific research at Genentech is focused on understanding the biology of Hippo and PI3K signaling pathways and how they can be targeted for cancer therapy. She has served as both the Project Team Leader and Biology Lead for multiple drug discovery programs at Genentech. Anwesha has published extensively in several high impact journals. She serves on the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the Keystone Symposia and is a recipient of the 2022 GWP Emerging Leader Award at Genentech and the 2023 Distinguished Service Alumni award from University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Abhishek is currently leading cross-functional efforts at A-Alpha Bio to discover molecular glues for novel ligase-target pairs. Prior to A-Alpha, he has 15 years of industry experience in pharma (Novartis) and biotech (Foghorn, Galenea) spanning early-stage hit identification through late-stage lead optimization. He has held project leadership roles for multiple oncology targets requiring a degradation approach and experience with different modalities in other therapeutic areas. He obtained his BS in biochemistry and MS in organic chemistry from Baylor University. Abhishek is passionate about navigating difficult problems in drug discovery that can significantly impact human health.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

José is the Global Head of Computer-Aided Drug Discovery (CADD), part of Global Discovery Chemistry at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). José joined Novartis in 2010, after ten years with the Schering-Plough Research Institute and Merck Research Laboratories in Kenilworth, NJ, USA, where he had increasing responsibilities in the CADD group. His expertise covers computational medicinal chemistry, molecular thinking, novel modes of action to drug the undruggable, ab initio calculations, molecular recognition, kinetics, solvation, protein-protein interactions and structure-based drug design. José is constantly pushing the frontiers of drug discovery, where he has contributed novel approaches for many projects in complex target spaces. With the vision of a fully integrated computational drug discovery team, bringing together drug discovery knowledge with hard-core physics and math and leveraging the fast evolution of the computational field, José has built an outstanding global team. José is passionate about innovation, servant leadership, music, baseball, football, and wine. He is on a mission to help drug discovery find the fastest path to impact human medicine.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Jim joined Samsara BioCapital as a Venture Partner in Fall 2022 and has over 28 years of experience in drug discovery across multiple therapeutic disciplines. Prior to joining Samsara, Jim spent 22 years at Janssen Research & Development in roles of increasing responsibility. Most recently, he was Vice President and Global Head, In Silico Discovery & External Innovation, leading a multi-disciplinary group of computational & data scientists providing predictive and design tools across all modalities within the Therapeutics Discovery organization at Janssen. Prior to this, he was Vice President, Discovery Chemistry, leading drug discovery teams at multiple sites in the US and Europe. These teams were responsible for the discovery of small molecule drug candidates working with partners across all six Therapeutic Areas within JRD and delivered clinical-stage small molecule drug candidates against targets ranging from kinases (e.g., BTK, JAK) & other enzymes (MALT1) to cytokines (IL17) & cytokine receptors (IL23R).

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Sean is founder and CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which is focused on using machine learning approaches for rare and neglected disease drug discovery. Sean graduated from the University of Aberdeen; receiving his MSc, PhD, in clinical pharmacology and DSc in science. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Lilly Research Laboratories, before working as a senior scientist at Pfizer and then Eli Lilly. He went on to join several startup companies at increasingly senior levels. Since 2005, he has been awarded over 30 NIH and DOD grants (STTR/SBIR grants, R21, UH2 and R01) as well as performing as a consultant on many others (raising tens of millions of dollars). He has authored or co-authored >375 peer reviewed papers, book chapters, edited 6 books on different aspects of drug discovery research and using computational approaches. He recently authored a book on "Winning Grants." He has a passion for finding new collaborators and developing new treatments for neglected and rare diseases as well as advancing new technologies for drug discovery.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Mark Elban is a scientific leader with GSK where he has worked for 15 years. He began his career in a fragment-based drug design team and has since spent time in lead discovery and lead optimization programs covering a broad range of therapeutic areas including oncology, pain, infectious disease, heart failure, neuroscience, and immunology. His med chem interests include free drug theory, brain penetrant drug design, and data visualization.

• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Nathaniel Elsen Principal Research Scientist II Drug Discovery Science and Technology - High Throughput Screening Ph.D. in 2008 from University of Wisconsin-Madison, Biochemistry/Enzymology 2009-2015: Protein Biochemist at Merck 2015-present: Assay development and screening at AbbVie

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

Ryan Emerson is a computational biologist with over a decade of experience designing algorithms and pipelines for analyzing high-throughout sequencing data at scale and building machine learning models with large sequence datasets. He has led the development and launch of computational infrastructure for multiple platform technologies and clinical products. As Vice President of Data Science at A-Alpha Bio, Ryan leads the development and application of AlphaBind, utilizing the immense size and quantitative resolution of AlphaSeq data to build ML models that accelerate the design and optimization of new therapeutics.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2

Michael Erb is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute. He graduated with a BA in biochemistry from Claremont McKenna College in 2014, received his PhD from Harvard University under the mentorship of Jay Bradner in 2017, and began his independent career as one of the inaugural Scripps Fellows in 2017. His laboratory develops chemical tools to modulate tumorigenic gene regulatory programs, leveraging specific expertise in high-throughput chemical synthesis, chemically induced proximity, forward genetics, and transcriptional genomics to address challenging targets like DNA-binding transcription factors. Dr. Erb is the recipient of an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (2018) and an Ono Pharma Foundation Breakthrough Science Initiative Award (2020).

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

PhD in quantum chemistry (Uppsala University, Sweden), 1992. Following postdoc and assistant/associate/full Professorships at different universities, he joined University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2011, where he is Professor of physical chemistry and leads the theoretical biochemistry group. In recent years, the main focus has been on modeling of protein structures and interactions, and computational drug design. His research group has recently developed a series of groundbreaking AI-based tools for ultrafast screening in drug discovery. Eriksson has published more than 300 scientific publications and holds several patents, including novel compounds for the treatment of aggressive cancers such as glioblastoma and acute myelocytic leukemia.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2

Dr. Daniel A. Erlanson is the Chief Innovation Officer for Frontier Medicines, which is using covalent fragments, machine learning, and chemoproteomics to target proteins often thought undruggable. Prior to Frontier he co-founded Carmot Therapeutics, where he contributed to two clinical-stage molecules. Before Carmot, Dr. Erlanson spent a decade developing fragment-based discovery technologies and leading medicinal chemistry projects at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Erlanson was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with James A. Wells at Genentech, earned his PhD in chemistry from Harvard University in the laboratory of Gregory L. Verdine, and his BA in chemistry from Carleton College. He has co-edited two books on fragment-based drug discovery and is an inventor on more than a dozen issued patents and an author of more than forty scientific publications. He also runs a blog devoted to fragment-based drug discovery, Practical Fragments (http://practicalfragments.blogspot.com/).

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies
• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery
• SC2: Fragment-Based Drug Design: Advancing Tools and Technologies
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

John Erve is from Chicago and studied Chemistry (BS, MS) at the University of Chicago and earned a PhD in Toxicology at Oregon State University. Following postdoctoral work at Vanderbilt (1995-1999) he joined BD-Biosciences (Woburn, MA) as a Study Director. In 2002, he joined AstraZeneca (Sweden) where he characterized reactive metabolites. In 2004 he joined Wyeth (Collegeville, PA) as a Principal Scientist responsible for metabolite identification. In 2010, John joined Novartis (Cambridge, MA) as a Lab Head in Analytical Sciences. John returned to drug metabolism at Elan Pharmaceuticals (San Francisco, CA) in 2012 and later formed Jerve Scientific Consulting, Inc to help small biotech companies in the Bay area with their drug discovery efforts. John was a certified D.A.B.T. from 2004 to 2019.

• SC1: Protein Degraders: A Beyond Rule of Five Space and in vitro ADME Perspective
• SC5: Protein Degraders: An in vivo ADME and Safety Perspective

Dr. Evindar is co-founder and president of DEL Source Inc and a sought-after drug discovery advisor and consultant throughout the biotech and pharma industry. Born and raised in the Kurdish mountains and educated in Canada, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Waterloo, in biochemistry and bio-organic chemistry, respectively, and a PhD degree in organic chemistry from the University of Toronto. He initiated his industrial career as a medicinal chemist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Boston) with focus on structure-based drug design. Dr. Evindar led the DNA Encoded Library (DEL) platform discovery group at GSK and was a senior site manager and group leader at GSK Boston for 15 years. Prior to DEL Source, Dr. Evindar was an executive team member and head of drug discovery at both 1859 Inc and Exo Therapeutics. He is an expert in drug discovery and one of the pioneers of DEL platform, working in the original team enabling the platform from its early days at Praecis Pharmaceuticals. Over the last 20 years, Dr. Evindar led a number of medicinal chemistry programs and been involved with advancing a dozen molecules from early discovery to development stage. He has been a tireless advocate of DEL platform, serving as an advisor throughout the industry and as an educational leader through presentations, roundtables, and DEL courses to support DEL implementation and its application in drug discovery. He has authored well over 50 publications and patents in the fields of screening and drug discovery, including seminal articles on DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) technology (LinkedIn).

• SC9: DNA-Encoded Libraries

Dr. Rick Ewing (William R Ewing) is a senior medicinal chemist experienced in leading teams to deliver development candidates, running academic collaborations and leading scientific assessments for business development opportunities. Rick started his chemical career during his time as an undergraduate at West Chester University. After his first year, he took on an internship at the Chester County Health Department where he practiced analytical chemistry, testing water samples that were obtained throughout the county. After completed his first internship, Rick then took on a co-op position at Wyeth Laboratories in their Quality Assurance department. This again was an analytical chemistry position using both wet chemistry and instrumentation to assay final drug products and API for release to the marketplace as well drug stability testing to assess drug storage. The co-op was extended to cover Rick’s last three years at West Chester University. Rick received the ACS Philadelphia local undergraduate award for his scholastics and achievements at West Chester University. It was during his time at Wyeth that Rick became passionate about learning the art of drug discovery and hence decided to pursue a PhD degree. Rick entered the doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania study under professor Madeline Joullie. At Penn, Rick took on the total synthesis of Didemnins and Detoxinines. During his third year, both Rick and Professor Joullie were approached by Dr. Paul Wiess (Professor emeritus in the University of Pennsylvania’s Chemical Engineering department) to work on the problem of delivering molecules to inhibit angiogenesis. This led to a productive drug discovery consortium with Prof. Joullie (U. Penn Chemistry), Dr. Juda Folkman (Harvard Medical School), and Prof Paul Wiess (U. Penn Chem. Engineering). Rick was involved in the consortium over his last two years of his time at U. Penn. Rick completed his PhD studies in the fall of 1988. Rick started his industrial career as a medicinal chemist at Rorer Pharmaceuticals, a small pharma company with labs in King of Prussia. He was fortunate to have project leadership on the first programs he worked on at Rorer. Rorer became a larger pharmaceutical company after being acquired by Rhone-Poulenc. Rick then had the great fortune to work in a global company that embraced overseas travel to increase exposure to diverse ways to do research as well as frequent trips to the RPR site in Vitry just outside Paris. The policies at RPR allowed Rick to present every year at Peptide and drug discovery conferences throughout his career at RPR. In addition to many GPCR targets, Rick worked in the area of discovering anti-thrombotic therapeutics by finding platelet and coagulation cascade inhibitors. In 1998 RPR merged with Hoechst to form Aventis. It was at this time that Rick was recruited to become a Group Leader at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Rick rose to senior director in small molecule drug discovery at Bristol Myers Squibb where he led medicinal chemistry teams in the therapeutic areas of cardiovascular, diabetes, obesity, and heart failure. In these areas, Dr. Ewing led medicinal chemistry teams to deliver over 15 development candidates. Among these are Milvexian, a first in class Factor XIa inhibitor currently in PIII development (Janssen/BMS). In addition to his roles in medicinal chemistry, Rick led the BMS chemistry awards program for more than 10 years. The awards program recognized graduate students through a 1 year graduate fellowship and pre-tenure professors with a two year unrestricted grant. The awards program included an awards symposium at BMS with the awarded professors and graduate students presenting. Rick led the two BMS academic collaborations with Scripps and Princeton where he helped build research programs directed at addressing long range synthetic and structural chemistry problems relevant to medicinal chemistry. Over his last 5 years at BMS, Rick took on additional responsiblities through a lead role in the scientific assessment of external assets and technologies to potentially be brought into BMS. In this role, Rick took part in over 100 scientific evaluations in business development across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, immunology, fibrosis, heart failure and platform technologies. From this effort, Rick developed a strong interest in joining biotech. He went on to begin his biotech career in the position of Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery at the Barer Institute, a discovery phase oncology biotech company. After the Barer Institute, Rick joined Rapafusyn as VP, Head of Chemistry where he continues his research career in discovering Type I molecular glues to inhibit intracellular PPIs of aberrant proteins. Rick is co-inventor on 75 patents, and co-author on 74 peer reviewed publications. In 2023, Rick was awarded the 2023 Edison Patent Award in Biotechnology, a team award for research done with BMS and the Scripps Institute. Also in 2023, Rick received the Philadelphia Section Award for his lifelong achievements in drug discovery research. In 2021, he was awarded the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fellow for his scientific achievements and contributions to the Society, and in 2018 received the Ondetti-Cushman award for leadership of the FXIa team that discovered Milvexian.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Dr. Federation is the co-founder and CEO of Talus Bio. He received his graduate degree in chemical biology from Harvard University where he trained with Jay Bradner developing chemical probes for gene regulator proteins. He completed a postdoc at the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences in Seattle with John Stamatoyannopoulos and Mike MacCoss developing genome-wide assays to study gene regulator activity. This work was spun into Talus Bio in 2020.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators

Marlena Schoenberg Fejzo is a women’s health scientist. She has published peer-reviewed scientific articles on many diseases of women including ovarian cancer, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and discovered the first genes for uterine fibroids, nausea and vomiting of pregnancy, and hyperemesis gravidarum (HG). In 2018, Fejzo, in collaboration with personal genetics company 23andMe, Inc published the first link between the placenta, appetite, and vomiting hormone GDF15. In 2022, she published the first mutation in GDF15 associated with HG, solidifying the role of GDF15 as a predisposing factor for HG. In December 2023, Fejzo et al. published a study that identified the mechanism involved in nausea and vomiting of pregnancy and HG. The study identified ways to potentially prevent and treat both nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (common misnomer "morning sickness") and HG. Fejzo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology, Chief Scientific Officer of Harmonia Healthcare, Research Director and Board Member of the Hyperemesis Education and Research (HER) Foundation, Board Member of the Foundation for Women’s Health, and an advisor for NGMBio. Fejzo made the top 10 list of 2023's Fiercest Women in Life Sciences, and in 2024 was a Time Woman of the Year and Time 100 Health Honoree, received the National Organization of Women Victoria Mastrobuono Award in Women’s Health, Forbes 50 Over 50 award in Innovation, and was a finalist for Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year.

• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Stephen W. Fesik, PhD, is the Orrin H. Ingram II Chair in Cancer Research and a Professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Chemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology (VICB), and the Center for Structural Biology (CSB). The focus of his research is on cancer drug discovery using fragment-based approaches and structure-based drug design. Prior to joining Vanderbilt in May 2009, Dr. Fesik was the Divisional Vice President of Cancer Research at Abbott (2000-2009) where he built a pipeline of compounds that are showing promising anti-cancer activities in early-stage clinical trials. In addition, while he was at Abbott, he developed several new NMR methods, determined the three-dimensional structures of several proteins and protein/ligand complexes, pioneered a fragment-based method for drug discovery called SAR by NMR, and applied this method to identify and optimize ligands for binding to many protein drug targets. Dr. Fesik has published more than 295 papers, trained 68 postdoctoral fellows, and has served as a member of the Editorial Boards of many scientific journals, scientific advisory boards, and the Keystone and Bruker Board of Directors. He has also obtained several awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Award in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance from EAS (2003), the SBS Technology Innovation Award (2010), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2010), the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research (2012), and 2021 Chester Stock Award from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Tim first obtained his BSc in cell biology and biochemistry and then a MSc in organic chemistry at the University of California - San Diego (UCSD). Still at UCSD, he pursued inhibitors of bacterial natural product biosynthesis and received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 2010. He conducted his post-doctoral studies at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH from 2010 to 2014. In this position, he further developed his knowledge of enzymology and molecular pharmacology in the context of high throughput screening. Tim joined Pfizer in February 2014 to support the Pfizer Centers for Therapeutic Innovation portfolio and the Serine Hydrolase Gene Family platform. Tim’s lab guides pharmacology assay design and execution for projects to support hit discovery and compound optimization into clinical candidates. Since 2017, he has been leading the organizational effort to develop hit identification capabilities with DNA-encoded library technologies.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Aaron Friedman is the principal product manager for Amazon Omics. In this role, he is responsible for listening to customers, defining requirements, and ensuring that Amazon Web Services (AWS) helps customers advance scientific discovery and precision medicine. Prior to this role, Friedman spent over five years in AWS healthcare and life sciences solutions (HCLS) architecture leadership roles, spending four years as the HCLS tech lead for the AWS Partner Network and then a year and a half as the HCLS tech lead for startups. In those roles, he also built many of the original architectures and patterns for genomics on AWS. Prior to AWS, Friedman was the first technical employee at Human Longevity, a biotech startup delivering omics-guided healthcare solutions. He received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at UCSD and graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Alexandra Frommlet is a Scientist in the Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology (BCP) department at Genentech. She is leading the biophysical support on several key pipeline projects, with expertise on developing SPR assays and applying various other biophysical techniques to facilitate hit finding, lead characterization and Mode Of Action studies. She earned an MSci in Chemistry from the ENSCL of Lille in France.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Xinxin Gao received his PhD in Chemistry from University of Miami in 2006. After postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University, he joined Genentech in 2010. He is a Principal Scientific Manager at the Peptide Therapeutics division in Genentech, and manages a group focused on developing Disulfide Constrained Peptide (DCP) binders against various therapeutic targets. He has co-authored > 30 publications in leading journals and is a co-inventor on several patents.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Thomas Garner joined Genentech in 2020. He is a Principal Scientist in the Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology (BCP) department. Thomas is the BCP and biophysics representative on several key pipeline projects at Genentech, developing SPR and other biophysics assays to facilitate hit finding and hit-to-lead development at Genentech. Thomas earned his MSci. in Biochemistry and Biological Chemistry at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. Thomas continued his studies at the University of Nottingham to earn a PhD in the Biological Chemistry Department, with a focus on NMR-based structural biology and biophysics of protein-protein and DNA-drug interactions. In 2010, he moved to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow at Louisiana State University. In 2012, he joined the Gavathiotis lab at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM). While at AECOM, he studied the regulation and inhibition of Bcl-2 family proteins and became faculty in 2017.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

Elizabeth (Beth) Garner is a seasoned pharmaceutical executive and corporate board member with a career-long focus on addressing unmet medical needs that affect women’s health and quality of life. Born and raised in Nigeria, she brings a global view to her work in both the corporate and non-profit worlds. With eighteen years of experience, Dr. Garner has wide expertise in product development, including clinical trial design and conduct, US/ex-US regulatory and FDA Advisory Committee strategy, medical affairs, and due diligence assessment of early- to late-stage therapeutic, device, and diagnostic product candidates. Dr. Garner is the CEO of SeNa Therapeutics, a start-up company focused on targeted therapies for women’s health disorders. Most recently, she was Chief Scientific Officer of Ferring Pharmaceuticals US, a mid-size global company focused on reproductive and maternal health, microbiome and gastrointestinal therapeutics, and uro-oncology. From 2019-2022, she was Chief Medical Officer of ObsEva and Agile Therapeutics. Dr. Garner has also held leadership roles at Myriad Genetics, Abbott Laboratories, and at Merck Research Labs where she was a key contributor on the Gardasil and Gardasil9 vaccines. Dr. Garner is currently on the Boards of Directors of Kezar Life Sciences (KZR), which develops novel therapies for autoimmune diseases, Sermonix Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on targeted breast cancer therapies, and is Chair of the Board of NUA Surgical, a start-up company dedicated to creating innovative surgical solutions in obstetrics and gynecology. She is also the Immediate Past President of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA), a professional organization whose mission is to advance women physicians, advocate for equity, and ensure excellence in healthcare. Elizabeth received joint M.D. and M.P.H. degrees from Harvard Medical and Public Health Schools, trained in obstetrics and gynecology at Brigham and Women’s (BWH)/Massachusetts General Hospitals, and completed a fellowship in gynecologic oncology at BWH/Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Prior to transitioning into industry in 2007, she was Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, where she focused on academic clinical practice in gynecologic oncology, basic science ovarian cancer research, and teaching and mentorship of medical students, residents, and fellowship trainees. Elizabeth has extensive experience as a media spokesperson and is a frequent panelist and speaker on a range of topics including innovation and investment in women’s health, women’s leadership, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and diversity in clinical trials. She is an author on close to 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers, is a 2019 and 2023 awardee of the PharmaVoice 100 Most Inspiring Individuals in the life sciences industry and was the 2022 recipient of the Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women’s Association.

• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Dr. Evripidis (Evris) Gavathiotis is a Professor of Biochemistry, Medicine, and Oncology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Co-Leader of the Cancer Therapeutics Program at Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center. He obtained his BSc in Chemistry from the University of Crete, Greece, and his PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of Nottingham, UK. He completed postdoctoral research in Structural and Chemical Biology at Rockefeller University and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and served as junior faculty at Harvard Medical School. He joined Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2011 as an Assistant Professor and became Full Professor and achieved tenure in 2019. His research delves into the mechanisms of cell death and the discovery and optimization of small molecule modulators towards novel chemical tools and therapeutics. He has pioneered mechanistic insights into key cell death proteins, validated novel targets for mitochondrial apoptosis, mitochondrial dynamics, chaperone-mediated autophagy, senescence, and MAPK/ERK signaling, and developed first-in-class small molecules for several challenging targets. He has co-authored over 90 publications, garnering more than 25,000 citations, many in high-impact journals. He holds over 65 issued US patents and patent applications and 50 foreign patents. His contributions have been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the Sidney Kimmel Scholar Award, the Sinsheimer Scholar Award, the Gabrielle's Angel Foundation Medical Research Award, the Young Chemical Biologist Award, the Pershing Square Sohn Prize, the Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award, the NYC BioAccelerator Prize, and the Julius Marmur Mentorship Award. In addition to his research and teaching, he has served on multiple NIH and European scientific review panels and science advisory boards. He is also a co-founder of five biotechnology companies, underscoring his commitment to translating scientific discoveries into therapeutic applications.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Ashwini Ghogare is the Head of AI and Automation for Drug Discovery at MilliporeSigma; an intrapreneur for the corporate venture focused on AI-driven drug discovery and automation in the Life Science and Healthcare sectors. With a strong background in transformational drug discovery technologies, Ashwini has significant experience developing and launching Generative AI platforms, incubating new biotech businesses, and commercializing enterprise solutions. Previously, Ashwini spearheaded strategic initiatives to discover groundbreaking AI technologies for drug discovery, culminating in the successful launch of the AI-powered drug design solution, AIDDISON™. Additionally, she played a key role in the global commercialization of Synthia™, MilliporeSigma’s leading retrosynthesis software. Ashwini holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry with a specialization in photobiology, where her research on photochemical drug delivery systems contributed to the founding of SingletO2 Therapeutics LLC.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Sanne Glad is Scientific Director at Amgen and heads up Drug Discovery Unit 1 at Amgen Research Copenhagen (previously Nuevolution). She has been instrumental in developing the DEL technology from a technology platform to an integrated part of Amgen's small molecule hit finding platform. She was project lead of the hit discovery and optimization within the PRMT5 program. She is currently engaged with several new early discovery projects as well as Amgen's molecular glue discovery efforts.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Sujatha Gopalakrishnan is leading the centralized Molecular Screening and Characterization group at Abbvie. Her team supports various therapeutic areas in assay development, screening, and advancing compounds including elucidation of the SAR and mechanistic studies for early-stage drug discovery efforts. She joined Abbott/Abbvie in 1995, and since then has held positions of increasing responsibility leading highly-productive scientific teams. With early Discovery, she has been advancing a range of assay platforms/technologies for target-based and phenotypic screens that impacted Abbvie pipeline. Sujatha is an author of over 45 peer-reviewed manuscripts as well as a co-inventor on two patents.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

No bio available.

• RNA-Modulating Small Molecule Drugs

Emily Hanan is the Head of Medicinal Chemistry at PostEra. Her focus is the application of PostEra’s machine learning-driven medicinal chemistry platform to accelerate a pipeline of women’s health and reproductive medicine programs. Prior to PostEra, Emily was a medicinal chemistry and drug discovery team lead at Genentech. During a 14 year tenure at Genentech focused in oncology and infectious disease, she led the chemistry team that discovered inavolisib, now FDA-approved for the treatment of breast cancer. Prior to Genentech, Emily was a medicinal chemist at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, contributing to oncology and immunology programs that advanced to the clinic. She obtained a BS in chemistry at Stanford University and has co-authored over 40 publications and patent applications.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1
• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Jen Hanisak grew up in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. After her first chemistry class in high school, she was hooked and went on to pursue her BS in Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004. During that time she was very fortunate to complete two summer internships at Schering-Plough Research Institute, where she became fascinated with medicinal chemistry. After obtaining her MS in organic chemistry in 2006, also from the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to Schering-Plough (acquired by Merck in 2009) as a full-time employee. In 2016, intrigued by emerging modalities, she decided to transition from small molecules research into the peptide space. She continues to enjoy the complex SAR and synthetic challenges of macrocyclic peptides, focusing on expanding the toolbox for efficient late-stage functionalization reactions. Outside of the lab, Jen enjoys reading non-fiction, cooking elaborate dishes whilst sipping wine or an amaro, and working out on her peloton to try and counteract the previous hobbies.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

No bio available.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Christian Heinis has studied biochemistry/chemistry at the ETH Zurich. After a PhD in the research group of Prof. Dr. Dario Neri at ETH, he did two post-docs, the first one with Prof. Dr. Kai Johnsson at the EPFL and the second one with Sir Gregory Winter at the LMB-MRC in Cambridge, UK. In 2008 he started as Assistant Professor at EPFL (supported with an SNSF professorship) and was promoted in 2015 to Associate Professor. Christian is a co-founder of Bicycle Therapeutics and the co-director of the NCCR Chemical Biology.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Christopher J. Helal, PhD, is the Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Biogen, where he is responsible for delivering the Small Molecule portfolio, developing new capabilities, and evaluating external opportunities. Prior to Biogen, he worked at Pfizer as a Senior Director of Medicinal Chemistry. In this role, he supported the Internal Medicine portfolio and led the Synthesis Technologies group that enabled critical chemistry for all of Pfizer Medicinal Chemistry. He received his BS at The Ohio State University and his PhD at Harvard University under Professor E.J. Corey where he studied asymmetric catalysis.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1
• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery
• GLP1 & Oral Peptides
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Thomas Hermann is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California San Diego. Prior, he led structure-guided discovery for anti-infective drugs at a biotech company. His research is guided by RNA structure as prologue to function and targeting. Thomas is a co-founder and scientific advisor of companies in the RNA targeting area.

• RNA-Modulating Small Molecule Drugs

Angelina Heyler is a Data Scientist working at GSK on DNA-encoded library (DEL) technologies. At the University of Pennsylvania, she studied Systems Engineering during her undergraduate program and Data Science during her master's. During this time, she also developed an interest in medicine through collaborative work with Penn Medicine and an internship at Merck. At GSK, Angelina now builds machine learning models, statistical analysis modules, and data pipelines at scale to leverage big data in DEL hit calling and analyses.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Karli Holman is a medicinal chemist embedded in GSK’s DNA-encoded library (DEL) platform. In this role she analyzes DEL selection data, triages potential hits for follow-up, executes off-DNA hit resynthesis, and develops confirmed series to explore SAR and achieve drug-like physicochemical properties. She has also contributed to the implementation, evaluation, and embedding of an on-DNA hit resynthesis and confirmation workflow that has reduced cycle times and enabled expanded coverage of series of interest. A San Diego native, Karli completed her BS at Westmont College and PhD at Caltech prior to joining GSK’s team.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Prof. Hsu earned his PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from The University of Texas at Austin and completed his postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute. The Hsu Laboratory focuses on the discovery of bioactive molecules. A central theme of the group is the development of covalent probes and inhibitors for investigating protein and lipid activity. Research in the group is multidisciplinary and uses a combination of organic synthesis, bioanalytical chemistry, and bioorganic chemistry. Current efforts include identifying new reactive chemistry, quantifying ligandability of proteins on a proteomic scale, and deciphering structure and function of membrane signals in living systems. Ultimately, the goal is to develop new molecules to enable chemical biology and therapeutic discovery. Prof. Hsu’s research program has been recognized by several awards including the highly competitive NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, Department of Defense CDMRP Career Development Award, Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Emerging Leader Award from The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, and CPRIT Recruitment of Rising Stars Award.

• RNA-Modulating Small Molecule Drugs

Executive in life sciences technology, specializing in start-ups, multi-omics, diagnostics, and platform services. At Anima Biotech, focusing on delivering innovative business models to democratize access to cutting-edge technology in mRNA and AI-driven small molecule drug discovery. Previously at Dante Labs, played a key role in developing consumer-driven genome sequencing applications and at-home diagnostics. Holds an MSc in Health Biology and a BSc in Biology from the University of L’Aquila.

• RNA-Modulating Small Molecule Drugs

Henrik Jensen (HJ) defended his phd at the university of Aarhus in 1999 and subsequently complete a post doc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL) focusing on developing and characterizing bioanalytical techniques. From 2003 to 2019 HJ had permanent postion at Copenhagen University focusing on research programs in physical and analytical chemistry. Part of this research lead to the formation of Fida Biosystems. Since 2019 HJ has been the full time CSO Fida Biosystems Aps (Fidabio). Fidabio develops novel instrumentation for in-solution characterization of proteins, protein interactions and particulate systems such as AAV´s and LNP´s. Recently, Fidabio launched the FidaNeo with ability to quantify in-solution kinetics as well as Fida Lambda Dynamics enabling in-solution small molecule protein interaction characterization.

• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies

Dr. Lei Jia leads a team focused on multi-modality drug discovery at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine in San Diego. His team develops and applies AI/ML methods to accelerate the drug discovery process. Before joining Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Lei worked at BMS and Amgen in several roles, such as cheminformatics, machine learning, CADD, and protein engineering. He and his team have helped multiple programs advance to the clinical stage. Prior to his career in the pharmaceutical industry, Lei worked at biotech companies Intrexon and Pacific Biosciences as a data scientist and protein engineer, designing and optimizing various proteins and enzymes for different applications. Lei received his PhD in computational chemistry and molecular modeling from New York University. Lei has co-authored more than 20 scientific publications and is a co-inventor on over 20 patents.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Andrew Judd received his PhD degree from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities under the mentorship of Professor Thomas R. Hoye. Subsequently he joined the research group of Professor Stephen F. Martin at the University of Texas at Austin as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow. Andrew began his industry career as part of Abbott Laboratories Metabolic Disease Research Division in 2002. Subsequently he has worked in Oncology Research since 2007 for Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie, Inc., where he is currently a Research Fellow. His research interests include apoptosis, protein-protein interactions, and antibody-drug conjugates.

• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Petrina Kamya, PhD, is the Head of AI Platforms and President of Insilico Medicine, Canada an end-to-end artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company. Before joining Insilico, Dr. Kamya spent eight years in various roles at Chemical Computing Group that involved scientific and business-related aspects of preclinical drug discovery. In addition to establishing the corporate strategy for the sales and business development of molecular modeling software for academia, she also played an active role as an application scientist working on real-world discovery projects and finally in a senior role in strategy and business development for pharma and biotech companies. Following her time at CCG, Petrina moved to Certara as a Market Access Manager, where she learned first-hand the challenges of getting drugs to market. Petrina has been with Insilico Medicine since August 2020. She holds a PhD in Chemistry (specializing in computational chemistry) from Concordia University.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1
• SC3: Fundamentals of Generative AI for Drug Discovery
• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Beginning his career as a synthetic chemist, Terry Kenakin received a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Alberta in Canada. After a postdoctoral fellowship at University College London, UK, he joined Burroughs-Wellcome as an associate scientist for 7 years. From there, he continued working in drug discovery for 25 years first at Glaxo, Inc., then Glaxo Wellcome, and finally as a Director at GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development Laboratories at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. Dr. Kenakin is now a professor in the Department of Pharmacology, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill. Currently he is engaged in studies aimed at the optimal design of drug activity assays systems, the discovery and testing of allosteric molecules for therapeutic application, and the quantitative modeling of drug effects. In addition, he is Director of the Pharmacology graduate courses at the UNC School of Medicine. He is a member of numerous editorial boards, as well as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Receptors and Signal Transduction. He has authored numerous articles and has written 10 books on pharmacology.

• TS6A: The Medicinal Chemistry-Pharmacology Interface: The 3 Independent SARs for New Drug Candidates

Tanweer Khan, Ph.D., is Director, Head of Discovery Chemistry, and joined Atai Life Sciences in 2021. Prior to Atai, Dr. Khan spent five years at Tri-Institutional Therapeutic Discovery Institute (Tri-TDI) as a Director, Medicinal Chemistry. He oversees and prosecutes a highly diverse portfolio of small molecule drug discovery programs in collaboration with academic institutions. In addition, he led an epigenetic oncology program and developed novel inhibitors of ENL-YEATS for the treatment of acute leukemias and solid tumors and licensing it to Bridge Medicines. Before TDI, he was Program Lead/Associate Principal Scientist at Merck/Schering-Plough for nine years. He led multidisciplinary drug discovery programs targeting diseases in the CNC, cardiovascular, metabolic, and infectious diseases areas, advancing multiple drug candidates into clinical development. He recognized the potential of re-purposing the Merck small molecules aspartyl protease inhibitors for a novel treatment for malaria. He contributed significantly to developing and defending proposals for Wellcome Trust funding to support collaborative malaria-focused research efforts. Dr. Khan earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde, UK, and conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Robert A. Holton at Florida State University, USA. He worked with anti-cancer drug Taxol’s SAR studies and total synthesis of polyether antibiotics Lonomycin A. Dr. Khan is an active member of the Red Cross and has engaged in many volunteers works with the Greater New York Region.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Dr. Shota Kikuchi is the Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Vividion Therapeutics, leading the development of covalent small molecules for oncology targets. He previously worked on CNS targets at Takeda California and Envoy Therapeutics. He holds a PhD from Harvard University.

• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies

Dr. Kireev is an expert in a broad area of drug discovery and life sciences with a specific focus on computer-aided drug design. During over 25 years in the industry and academia, Dr. Kireev has been involved in the discovery of several drugs and drug candidates, co-invented a kinase-targeted cancer therapeutic, currently in clinical trials, and co-authored over 100 patents and publications. His research program also includes computational biophysics and development of new AI-powered CADD approaches.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Dana Klug is currently a Medicinal Chemistry Project Leader at Arvinas, Inc., where she works to develop PROTAC therapeutics for a variety of disease areas. Before joining Arvinas in 2021, Dana was a postdoctoral research associate at University College London School of Pharmacy working with Prof. Matthew Todd on open source drug discovery with a focus on developing novel antibiotics. She earned her Ph.D. from Northeastern University in 2018 in Dr. Michael Pollastri’s group, where her research was centered on small molecule therapeutics for neglected tropical diseases such as human African trypanosomiasis. For this work she was awarded an ACS MEDI Predoctoral Fellowship in 2015.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Prof. Thomas Kodadek received his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Miami (FL) in 1981 and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1985. He then pursued postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. Bruce Alberts at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School from 1985-1987. In the fall of 1987, he joined the faculty of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, rising to the rank of full professor. In 1998, he moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas where he served as Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Biology, as well as the Director of the Division of Translational Research. In June 2009, Prof. Kodadek moved to the Scripps Research Institute campus in Jupiter, FL (now UF Scripps Biomedical Research) where he is Professor of Chemistry. Prof. Kodadek works in the field of chemical biology, which involves the development of chemical tools to monitor and manipulate important processes in biology and medicine. He co-founded Deluge Biotechnologies in 2017 and Triana Biosciences in 2022.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Dr. Markella Konstantinidou is a Staff Scientist in the lab of Michelle Arkin at the University of California, San Francisco. She obtained a degree in Pharmacy and a MSc in Medicinal Chemistry from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2016, she moved to Groningen, the Netherlands to pursue doctoral studies under the supervision of Prof. Alexander D?mling, as a Marie Curie fellow in the ITN network AEGIS. Her PhD research focused on multi-component reactions with diverse applications in medicinal chemistry and new modalities, including PROTACs. Her current research focuses on the development of molecular glues and protein-protein interactions. Her research interests include medicinal chemistry, drug design, chemical biology, fragment-based screening, and biophysical assays, in particular for protein-protein interactions.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues: Beyond Oncology

Krishna Kumar is Robinson Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University. He is a Member of the Cancer Center at the Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He received his PhD from Brown University in 1996 and after postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Research Institute joined Tufts in 1998. Kumar’s contributions to science, and in particular chemistry and medicine, have been recognized widely. He was named a DuPont Young Professor, recognized as one of the top 35 young innovators in the world by MIT Technology Review magazine (TR35), awarded a Global Indus Technovator award from MIT-IBC, is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, Technology award from the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center, Excellence in Chemical Sciences Award from the Indian Society for Chemistry and Biology and was elected a Fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK). His contributions to science range from the origin of life, peptide and protein design, medicinal chemistry, biophysics and cell and molecular biology. In particular, he is credited with developing therapeutics for a wide range of infectious and metabolic diseases.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

No bio available.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

Dr. Leftheris is an independent consultant who was most recently the CSO of Vilya Therapeutics, a company focused on using ML/neural networks to identify cell permeable macrocycles as orally bioavailable drugs. Prior, she was Vice President of Chemistry at Pliant Therapeutics, where she built and led the Discovery Chemistry, computational chemistry, integrin library, and structural biology efforts leading to multiple compounds advancing into the clinic for the treatment of IPF, Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) (Bexotegrast), NASH, and I/O disease. Prior, she was site-head of Discovery Chemistry for Celgene overseeing the kinase and E3 Ligase ligand-directed degradation efforts. She spent the early part of her career at BMS in both the Oncology and Immunology Discovery Chemistry divisions. To date, she and her teams have advanced 15 compounds into the clinic, many from program inception. She has over 135 publications and issued patents.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Dr. Dongdong Li, who completed his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at China Pharmaceutical University, has been deeply involved in the field of medicinal chemistry for many years, with extensive experience in drug molecule discovery and optimization. He is currently serving as the Director of Medicinal Chemistry at DP Technology, and his main job is to identify new hits for undruggable targets, like PPIs, IDPs, GPCRs, and ion channels.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators

Dr. Liao joined University of California of Riverside as founding faculty of Bioengineering Department. Dr. Liao has published more than 70 peer reviewed paper and is inventor on more than 28 US and PCT patents including the first orally available GLP1 modulators and human sweet receptor genes. Dr. Liao’s research led to three marketed drugs, Gilenya, siponimod and ozanimod. Dr. Liao is a Fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Dr.Liao’s research at UCR has been focused on the development of a novel high-sensitive and quantitative FRET(qFRET) technology for protein-protein interactions and multi-enzymatic catalyzed reactions of SUMO and Ubl cascades in innate immunity, host-virus interaction, cancers and diabetes.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Seth focuses on 8VC's Bio-IT investment area where he invests, builds and supports companies across areas such as therapeutics, tools, bio-infrastructures and broader applications of biology. He joined 8VC from Amgen’s Business Development technology group, where he was responsible for search & evaluation and transactions for platform technologies across a number of therapeutic and functional areas. Seth was also responsible for strategic academic partnerships across all therapeutic and geographic areas. Prior to Amgen, Seth was at ZS Associates where he led teams engaging in market research, sales force design, and strategy. Prior to ZS Associates, Seth was co-founder and COO of Protomer Technologies, a Pasadena-based biologics startup. Seth received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from the California Institute of Technology and holds a BS and MS in Biochemistry from Brandeis University.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Dr. Ewa Lis is the Founder and CEO of Koliber Biosciences, a pioneering computational biology company that leverages an advanced AI platform for the discovery and optimization of peptides. With a rich background in both computer science and biological sciences, Dr. Lis's expertise encompasses deep learning, data augmentation, graph networks, and various domains of biology and chemistry. Before establishing Koliber Biosciences in 2014, she held key positions at Life Technologies, Genomatica, and Reveal Biosciences, where she contributed to the development of diverse technologies ranging from algorithms for pathology tissue classification to tools for genome engineering research and sustainable microbial chemicals. Dr. Lis earned her BA in Chemistry from Cornell University and her PhD in Biological Sciences from The Scripps Research Institute.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2

Professor Rob Liskamp obtained his PhD Bio-Organic Chemistry at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands (1982). Post-doctoral research (1983-1986) was carried out in The Institute of Cancer Research and Department of Chemistry of Columbia University, New York. From 1986-1993, he was an assistant professor at the University of Leiden. In 1991 he was a visiting professor at the University of California in Los Angeles. In 1994, he became associate professor at Utrecht University and in 1996 professor of Molecular Medicinal Chemistry. In 2012, he was a visiting professor at the Universities of Leeds and Glasgow. He was Professor and Chair of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Glasgow from 2013 through 2019. He is now Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Chemistry of the University of Glasgow, Guest Professor in the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht within the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Maastricht and Consultant of Cristal Therapeutics.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Dr. Ma has 15+ years of technology and drug discovery experience in pharma-biotech settings and is currently the Chief Technology Officer of Structure Therapeutics. Prior to joining Structure, Dr. Ma was site head and General Manager of Amgen Biopharmaceutical R&D Center (Shanghai), responsible for Amgen’s structural biology globally and China research platforms, supporting all preclinical drug discovery projects including small molecule and biologics in multiple disease areas. Prior to Amgen, she was at GlaxoSmithKline, supporting multiple preclinical drug discovery programs across a variety of target classes for target validation, protein characterization, biophysics and structural biology studies in the fields of neuroscience, regenerative medicine and mitochondria biology. Dr. Ma completed postdoc training under the tutelage of the late Nobel Laureate Dr. Gunter Blobel at the Rockefeller University and obtained her Ph.D from University of Pennsylvania.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Dr. Sita Sirisha Madugula received her Ph.D. in Computational biology from Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, India. She is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a globally recognized institution renowned for excellence in scientific research and innovation. Her research bridges artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and computational biology to advance drug discovery and pharmaceutical innovation. With a strong foundation in in-silico drug discovery and AI-enhanced protein modeling, has developed machine learning models for key therapeutic targets, including nuclear receptors and CRISPR-Cas systems, driving the discovery of novel treatments for diseases such as Tuberculosis. Her expertise spans cheminformatics, bioinformatics, and drug repurposing, with a focus on designing predictive models for therapeutic targets and identifying druggable scaffolds using advanced clustering and machine learning techniques. Dr. Madugula’s work has resulted in high-impact publications and significant contributions to the development of innovative approaches in drug repurposing approaches. As an editorial board member for the Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM) and an invited peer reviewer for leading journals, including Scientific Reports and Nature Communications, Dr. Madugula is recognized for her thought leadership in computational approaches to pharmaceutical and healthcare research. Her ongoing work at ORNL reflects a commitment to advancing AI-driven methodologies to address global challenges in healthcare and drug development.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2

Iambic Co-Founder and CTO Fred Manby has over 30 years of experience in developing technologies for understanding and discovering molecules. Much of his academic career was spent as a professor in chemistry at the University of Bristol in the UK, and his research resulted in over 200 publications and numerous awards. In 2019, he co-founded Iambic (at that time called Entos) with the mission of combining AI technologies and automation to revolutionize small-molecule drug discovery.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Brent Martin received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the University of California in San Diego developing new chemical strategies for correlated fluorescence and electron microscopy. He then carried out postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Research Institute developing new strategies for activity-based profiling, high-throughput screening, and chemical proteomics. As faculty member at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he continued expanding the scope of activity-based profiling methods, while also establishing new bioconjugation reactions to detect and profile protein lipidation, redox modifications, and cysteine occupancy. Brent is the recipient of the NCI Howard Temin K99/R00 award in Cancer Research, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and the NIGMS MIRA Established Investigator Award. He then moved to industry to lead the Chemical Biology at Janssen and was Vice President and Head of Chemical Biology at Scorpion Therapeutics.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery
• SC6: Chemical Biology for Covalent Drug Discovery, Phenotypic Screening, and Target Deconvolution

Andy Martin did his undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, where he also received his PhD in 2003, focusing on protein folding and directed evolution. From 2003 to 2008, he pursued postdoctoral studies in the Biology Department at MIT, where he investigated the mechanisms of ATP hydrolysis, substrate recognition, and degradation by the bacterial AAA+ protease ClpXP. In 2008, Dr. Martin became a faculty member in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, and since 2015 he has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research focuses on the structure and function of AAA+ proteases and protein translocases, with a main emphasis on the ubiquitin-proteasome system.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues: Beyond Oncology

Megan received her BA in Chemistry from Miami University and her PhD from Penn State University under Marty Bollinger and Carsten Krebs. Her PhD work led to an understanding for how iron- and 2-oxoglutarate dependent oxygenases suppress hydroxylation to allow for halogenation and other outcomes important in natural product biosynthesis. Upon graduation, she performed postdoctoral studies at Scripps Research in the chemical biology laboratory of Ben Cravatt as a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow. Matthews investigated the prevalence of undiscovered protein-bound electrophiles and the (dys)functions that the unknown electrophiles impart, uncovering evidence for their involvement in cancer and diseases of the central nervous system. Her program is tracking down these and a host of other leads to novel disease biology and therapeutics.

• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies

Mary Matyskiela, Ph.D. is Vice President of Molecular Sciences at Neomorph, Inc. Mary received her B.S. in Chemistry from Yale University, where she performed undergraduate research in the lab of Dr. Craig Crews. She then moved to the University of California San Francisco for graduate work on ubiquitin ligase mechanism in the lab of Dr. David Morgan, and went on to perform postdoctoral research at the University of California Berkeley, studying the structure and function of the 26S proteasome with Dr. Andreas Martin, HHMI. Most recently, Mary served as Associate Director of Structural Biology and Proteomics at Bristol Myers Squibb. Prior to that, Mary spent 6 years at Celgene working to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of thalidomide analogs and expand the horizons of molecular glue targeting through cereblon-CRL4.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1
• Degraders & Molecular Glues: Beyond Oncology

No bio available.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Campbell McInnes, PhD, is Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, has experience in Drug Discovery in both Industry and in Academia. Prior to joining USC, he was the Head of Structure-Based Drug Design at Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals, a company started by Professor Sir David Lane, one of the discoverers of the P53 tumor suppressor protein. Research in the McInnes Laboratory centers on discovering novel chemical entities based on inhibiting protein-protein interactions and specifically focuses on using the REPLACE methodology, a structure-guided fragment-based design approach employing the techniques of computational chemistry, structural biology, and synthetic organic chemistry. REPLACE is being applied to develop selective kinase inhibitors where a clear rationale for kinase selectivity has been established or where targeting the ATP binding site is problematic and current targets include PLK1, CDK2, and BRAF. Dr. McInnes has also founded the PPI Pharmaceuticals, LLC, to commercialize his academic discoveries.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Hans Melo is co-founder and CEO of Menten AI, Inc., a biotech startup developing a proprietary AI platform to design cyclic peptides with desired properties including high affinity, stability, and membrane-permeability. Hans holds a PhD in Reinforcement Learning from the University of Toronto.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Elena Menichelli heads the Structural Biology team at Arrakis Therapeutics. Her work focuses on developing small molecules that modulate the function of RNA for developing new therapies that extend beyond currently druggable protein targets. Her long-standing interest in RNA function and modulation originated during her PhD in Dr Kiyoshi Nagai's lab at the MRC-LMB, University of Cambridge, UK. She joined The Scripps Research Institute as a postdoc with Prof Jamie Williamson, before working at DiscoverX KINOMEscan and Novartis San Diego on drug discovery of hard to drug targets.

• RNA-Modulating Small Molecule Drugs

I received a PhD from the Department of Chemistry at Wayne State University in the laboratory of William Hase. There, I explored and developed methods to model intermolecular forces that drive molecular recognition and ensuing chemical reactions. As a postdoc, I joined the bioorganic laboratory of Dr. Shahriar Mobashery first at Wayne State University and then at the University of Notre Dame. I worked on understanding the mechanism by which ß-lactamases hydrolyze ß-lactam antibiotics. I was also involved in the development of mechanism-based (covalent) small-molecule inhibitors of matrix metalloproteinases, cathepsins, and ß-lactamases. In my lab at Indiana University, we develop small molecules to modulate the function of proteins involved in promoting tumor growth and metastasis. We are currently developing small-molecule modulators of protein interactions of Ras-like and Rho GTPases, the TEAD-Yap transcription factor complex, and the urokinase receptor uPAR. We investigate compounds and their targets in breast, pancreatic, lung and brain cancer cells and animal models. Some of these small molecules are used to probe their targets in spinal cord and traumatic brain injury as well as neurodegenerative diseases through collaborations. In addition to my funding from the National Institutes of Health, I am a recipient of a Research Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society. I am a member of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Stark Neurosciences Institute.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions

Manuel Merz is a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, working with Prof. Amit Choudhary on developing bifunctional molecules to overcome canonical drug resistances. He completed his PhD at EPFL under Prof. Christian Heinis, where he developed methods for synthesizing large combinatorial libraries of small cyclic peptides suitable for high-throughput screening and developing orally bioavailable ligands. His research focuses on developing innovative therapeutic modalities to address unmet medical needs.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Claire Marie Metrick started her career by obtaining a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering with a minor in chemistry from Boston University. After graduation, she worked with the structural biology team at Novartis Vaccines before going on to pursue a PhD in biochemistry from Tufts Medical School in the lab of Katya Heldwein. Claire's thesis work focused on characterizing the structure and flexibility of proteins in the tegument layer of Herpes Simplex Virus 1, using X-Ray crystallography and other structural and biochemical techniques to describe their multiple and redundant functions. She took this expertise to a postdoctoral position at Biogen, where she continued her crystallographic studies and helped to build out the company's in-house cryo-EM suite. Claire has been at Biogen for 7 years where she has had impact on many programs of various modalities and is now a Senior Scientist.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

Dr. Ella Morishita is the Chief Scientific Officer at Veritas In Silico, a leading biotech company in Japan specializing in mRNA-targeted drug discovery. With a background in X-ray crystallography and structure-based drug design, Dr. Morishita has played a pivotal role in developing innovative biophysical and computational approaches, including bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, and AI, to accelerate and refine drug discovery processes. At Veritas In Silico, she spearheads the company’s small molecule drug discovery efforts and has overseen over 50 collaborative research programs with top pharmaceutical and biotech companies in Japan and globally, advancing the discovery of novel therapies targeting mRNA. With more than 20 years of expertise in mRNA targeting, beginning with her PhD research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Dr. Morishita has published extensively in the field, further establishing Veritas In Silico as a global leader in the emerging field of mRNA-targeted therapeutics.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Carol A. Mulrooney, Ph.D. is an Investigator in GSK’s Encoded Libraries Technology Platform with a focus on providing and supporting data analysis within the post-selection chemistry team. Prior to joining GSK, Dr. Mulrooney worked at the Center for the Development of Therapeutics at the Broad Institute. She began her career at the Broad by utilizing her expertise in synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry toward the design of new screening collections of structurally complex small molecules and the discovery of potent antimalarial compounds. She subsequently transitioned to a cheminformatics role, providing data analysis and informatics support to drug discovery teams across the institute.Dr. Mulrooney received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in the lab of Prof. Marisa Kozlowski, developing asymmetric syntheses of natural product scaffolds.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

No bio available.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Swetha is a Vice President with OMX Ventures. In her current role, she sources and leads diligence on investments, and supports several portfolio companies. She also serves as a board observer at VedaBio and Glyphic Biotechnologies. Prior to OMX, Swetha was an Associate at Flagship Pioneering after completing the Fellows Program in 2018. In this role, she co-founded and operated three new companies in AI/deep learning, agriculture, and cell therapy. Before joining Flagship, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School developing novel cures for hearing and balance disorders. Swetha holds a PhD in Medicine (Neuropharmacology) from the University of Sydney and Bachelor of Biomedical Science with Honors from the University of Newcastle.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Marina’s current role is the Head of Drug Discovery at Foghorn Therapeutics. She brings more than 20 years of experience in small molecule drug discovery from assay development and screening to Lead Optimization. Prior to joining Foghorn, she led the sitewide screening team at Johnson & Johnson. In this position, she established highly efficient compound screening & profiling and demonstrated continuous success in progressing Leads to NME advancing discovery projects in Oncology, CVM, Immunology, and Neuroscience. Marina has extensive experience in drugging protein-protein interactions (PPIs), transcription factors (TFs), and other targets that were previously considered undruggable.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators

No bio available.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Dan Nomura is a Professor of Chemical Biology and Molecular Therapeutics in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology in the Division of Molecular Therapeutics at the University of California, Berkeley, and an Investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute. He is also the Co-Director of the Molecular Therapeutics Initiative at UC Berkeley. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF. Since 2017, he has been the Director of the Novartis-Berkeley Translational Chemical Biology Institute focused on using chemoproteomic platforms to tackle the undruggable proteome. He is Co-Founder of Frontier Medicines, a start-up company focused on using chemoproteomics and machine learning approaches to tackle the undruggable proteome. He is also the Founder of Vicinitas Therapeutics based on his group’s discovery of the Deubiquitinase Targeting Chimera (DUBTAC) platform for targeted protein stabilization. He is on the Scientific Advisory Boards for Frontier Medicines, Vicinitas Therapeutics, Photys Therapeutics, Apertor Pharma, Ecto Therapeutics, Oerth Bio, and Deciphera Pharmaceuticals. Nomura is also on the scientific advisory boards of The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and the MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is also an Investment Advisory Partner at a16z Bio+Health, an Investment Advisory Board member at Droia Ventures, and an iPartner with The Column Group. He earned his BA in Molecular and Cell Biology in 2003 and PhD in Molecular Toxicology in 2008 at UC Berkeley with Professor John Casida and was a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Research with Professor Benjamin F. Cravatt before returning to Berkeley as a faculty member in 2011. Among his honors include the National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award, Searle Scholar, and the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research ASPIRE award.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Dr. Kirill Novikov is a Principal Scientist at Insitro, where he plays a pivotal role in advancing drug discovery through innovative approaches. With a robust background in synthetic and medicinal chemistry, Dr. Novikov specializes in the use of DNA-encoded libraries and high-throughput synthesis techniques to explore uncharted chemical spaces. He focuses on accelerating the drug development pipeline by producing advanced chemical matter and by training machine learning models. Dr. Novikov holds a Ph.D. in Organic & Bioorganic Chemistry from Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, along with a Master's degree in Organic & Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Elmar Nurmemmedov is a scientist in the field of drug discovery. PhD in molecular biophysics from Lund University, Sweden. Postdoctoral training from Harvard Medical School and Scripps Research Institute. Cofounder and CEO of CellarisBio.

• SC4: Detecting Target Engagement: Technology Innovations

Tudor I. Oprea is a digital drug hunter with three decades of experience in knowledge management applied to target and drug discovery. He co-developed ChemGPS, the “lead-like approach,” systems chemical biology, and a knowledge-based classification for human proteins. He co-discovered the first GPER agonist (orphan drug designated, LNS8801), GPER antagonist, and several GLUT transporter inhibitors. His machine-learning models include cheminformatics, drug discovery, disease, and target biology. His team maintains DrugCentral and Pharos, part of an NIH Common Fund project. He co-authored over 300 publications and 10 US patents and edited 2 books on informatics in drug discovery. He is CSO at Expert Systems, Inc., a San Diego-based i2020 Accelerator company.

• Generative AI & Predictive Modeling

Brian M. Paegel earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Duke University and his Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Berkeley as a student of Richard Mathies working on miniaturized and integrated DNA sequencing technology development in collaboration with the Human Genome Project. He pursued postdoctoral studies in chemical biology and molecular evolution under the mentorship of Gerald Joyce at Scripps Research. He was the recipient of both a NIH National Research Service Award (F32) and a Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00). In 2008, Paegel was appointed to the Scripps Research chemistry faculty and received the NIH Director’s New Innovator award and an NSF CAREER award in recognition of his contributions in reaction miniaturization. In 2019, Paegel rejoined the University of California System where he is Professor in the Departments of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry, and Biomedical Engineering at Irvine. His laboratory develops chemical synthesis methodology for the preparation of solid-phase DNA-encoded libraries and engineers accompanying analytical instrumentation to conduct activity-based "off-DNA" library screens. Looking forward, Paegel is exploring droplet-compatible assay concepts that could render the entire proteome "druggable" and fulfill the long-standing vision of the Genome Project to translate DNA sequence into drugs.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Chris earned his BSc in Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University. He did undergraduate research in the lab of Philip Garner working on synthetic methodology and the synthesis of alkaloid natural products. He received his PhD in Chemistry from Yale University, under the supervision of David A. Spiegel. During his graduate studies he developed a class of bifunctional molecules that recruit endogenous antibodies to specific disease targets, such as HIV, resulting in their immune-mediated clearance. He carried out postdoctoral studies under the supervision of Ben Cravatt as a fellow of the American Cancer Society at The Scripps Research Institute, where he developed chemical proteomic platforms aimed towards expanding the ligandable proteome. Chris started his independent lab at Scripps in August 2018, where he is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry. There, his group develops chemistry-centric strategies to investigate human biology in therapeutic contexts. Chris is recipient of the CDRMP New Investigator Idea Development Award from the DoD, the Exploratory Cell Network Award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and co-founder of Belharra Therapeutics.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

After completing graduate studies in protein crystallography at Cambridge University, I joined Astex Pharmaceuticals to focus on the early development of small molecules using fragment-based drug discovery. I continued a hit identification focus at AstraZeneca both in the UK and Boston research hubs before joining C4 Therapeutics in 2016. In 2021, I joined Treeline Biosciences to build out their Structural Biology, Biophysics and Biochemistry capabilities across sites in MA and CA. In 2023, I joined Nexo Therapeutics to build and lead the discovery organization as we pursue clinical relevant targets.

• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies

Snahel Patel, the Vice President of Chemistry at Frontier Medicines, oversees groups in South San Francisco and Boston, responsible for Medicinal, Platform, and Process Chemistry. His team is instrumental in advancing small molecule covalent and degrader therapeutics, significantly enriching the pipeline with groundbreaking treatments. Notably, he was the dual Project Team and Chemistry Team Lead for Frontier’s first Development Candidate, FMC-376 (currently in Phase I/Ib). Prior to joining Frontier Medicines, Snahel held the position of Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Tenaya Therapeutics. During his tenure, he successfully led the discovery of TN-301, a best-in-class HDAC6 inhibitor for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HFpEF), which has completed Phase I clinical trials. Snahel’s extensive experience extends to Genentech, where he spent ~11 years contributing to the establishment of the small molecule discovery chemistry group and delivering to the clinical pipeline. Within this role, he served as Chemistry Team Lead and/or co-inventor on multiple Development Candidates, including GDC-8264/RG6287 (currently in Phase II for inflammatory diseases) and GDC-0134 (Phase I for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Additionally, he was a department lead for scouting, vetting, innovating, implementing, and managing technologies to help sustain a competitive edge in small molecule drug discovery. Before Genentech, Snahel spent ~10 years at Pfizer, where he managed hit-to-lead execution in various areas, including kinases, GPCRs, and other unique enzyme targets. He collaborated with Pfizer’s other research sites to optimize leads and advance them to pre-clinical stages. His career began at Pfizer’s Sandwich, U.K., site, where he later relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his time in Cambridge, he played a pivotal role in establishing the first Pfizer research chemistry laboratory in the region.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Jigar Patel is currently an Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry at PTC Therapeutics. Since joining PTC in 2016, his work has primarily focused on the discovery and development of small molecule splicing modifiers, spanning various stages of hit to lead optimization. Prior to joining PTC, Jigar completed his PhD at UC Berkeley under the guidance of Professor Dean Toste, working on asymmetric catalysis.

• RNA-Modulating Small Molecule Drugs

David Pearlman is a pioneer in the field of computational chemistry. After receiving the first Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley focused on applying modern computational methods to study large molecules, he became the founding product manager at Biosym Technologies (later Accelrys/Biovia). Subsequently, he was an early employee of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and later developed and helmed the biologics software platform (Bioluminate) for Schrodinger, Inc. Dr. Pearlman was also the first author and a principal developer of the widely-used AMBER program for many years. He has published a long string of seminal papers on free energy perturbation, including the first papers demonstrating the feasibility of highly parallelized FEP and the use of FEP for rank-ordering congeneric binders. He has also published extensively on topics such as ligand scoring, protein modeling, NMR refinement, and de novo ligand design. Today, Dr. Pearlman is Vice President of Product for QSimulate.

• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies

Our laboratory focuses on the design, synthesis and evaluation of novel pharmacological tools in the areas of cancer, neurodegeneration, and potentially other disease areas, using innovative drug discovery approaches. The overall goal of the laboratory is to bring together basic sciences including modern nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) techniques, X-ray crystallography, computer modeling, traditional medicinal synthetic chemistry, and cell biology to elucidate the molecular basis of disease and to design novel pharmacological tools that serve for target validation and to develop novel therapeutic agents. A central theme of our laboratory is the development of novel methodologies to tackle protein-protein interactions (PPIs) as targets for drug discovery, and to further advance our most promising agents into potential therapeutics.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

I currently head the early discovery group at Nurix Therapeutics, where we leverage our internal DEL collection to identify ligands to target proteins for degradation by harnessing E3 ligases and the Ubiquitin/Proteasome pathway. Prior to joining Nurix I worked at GSK, helping build their internal DEL platform, and leading the team screening the GSK DEL collection by affinity selection.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

No bio available.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

John Quinn is currently a distinguished scientist specializing in biophysics within Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology at Genentech supporting SMDD pipeline projects. He is particularly interested in the practical exploitation of kinetics for applications that are of value in preclinical SMDD. He received a PhD in Applied Immunology and Biochemistry from Dublin City University (DCU) and after a postdoc position developing biosensors at DCU, he joined Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX, working on the development of SPR devices. This technology was later licensed to Nomadics, Inc., and he joined them to head the development and commercialization of the SensiQ Pioneer as CSO. His interests in drug discovery led him to take a principal scientist position at Takeda California leading a biophysical group where his group supported both LM and SM projects.

• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Rayees Rahman is CEO and co-founder of Harmonic Discovery. Rayees completed his PhD in Biophysics and Systems Pharmacology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he developed machine learning models to characterize protein kinase structural biology.

• Generative AI & Predictive Modeling

Dr. Murali Ramachandra is the CEO at Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited, a biotech company engaged in drug discovery for cancer and inflammatory diseases. He received his PhD from University of Idaho (USA), and postdoctoral training from University of Kansas Medical Center and DuPont Experimental Station. Prior to his current role, he has held the position of the Chief Scientific Officer at Aurigene, and positions of increasing responsibility at Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals and US National Cancer Institute. He has contributed to the identification of 16 novel drug candidates, co-authored 60 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and is an inventor of 18 granted US patents.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Arvind Rao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan. His group uses image analysis and machine learning methods to link image-derived phenotypes with genetic data, across biological scale (i.e. single cell, tissue and radiology data). Such methods have found application in radiogenomics and drug repurposing based on phenotypic screens. Arvind received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan, specializing in transcriptional genomics, and was a Lane Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in bioimage informatics.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• SC7: AI Applications in Drug Development: Strategies for Innovation and Integration

No bio available.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Judith Reeks is an Associate Director in the Molecular Sciences department of Astex Pharmaceuticals. Her main focus is using structural biology for drug discovery. She gained a PhD from the University of St Andrews in the lab of Prof. James Naismith, studying the structural biology of CRISPR-associated proteins. She then moved to the lab of Prof. Martin Noble and Prof. Jane Endicott in the Northern Institute for Cancer Research as a post-doctoral research associate to work on drug discovery projects. She joined Astex in 2015.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry

Andreas has more than twenty years of experience in drug discovery DMPK. He is VP and currently heads Preclinical M&S which provides the PK and PK/PD modelling support for Bayer Pharma’s entire research portfolio. Previously, he was heading Research PK with responsibility for the complete DMPK support of all drug discovery projects across diverse therapeutic areas from lead generation to preclinical candidate selection & profiling. Andreas holds a PhD in Cell Biology from Leipzig University. During his PostDoc at King’s College London, funded by several pharmaceutical companies, he worked on in vitro models and in silico approaches to assess and predict the CNS penetration of drugs. He then joined Discovery DMPK at Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, where he expanded his area of expertise to intestinal and hepatic transport processes and their relevance for drug absorption, drug disposition and drug-induced liver injury. Having a passion for scientific innovations he has been supervising >15 Master and PhD students. His latest research interests are in the fields of PK/PD of new modalities, machine learning, microphysiological systems, oral absorption modelling and drug delivery technologies.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Jarrett Remsberg first trained at the National Cancer Institute developing peptide-based inhibitors of membrane signaling pathways. He earned a BS in both Chemical-Biological Engineering and Biology from MIT and his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine with Professor Mitch Lazar. Jarrett then joined the Cravatt Lab at Scripps Research for postdoctoral studies as an American Cancer Society Fellow. His research focused on applying chemoproteomic techniques to interrogate the ligandable proteome, including serine hydrolases involved in NRAS depalmitoylation and function-first strategies to assess the global impact of electrophilic compounds on protein complexes in human cells. Jarrett has since moved to industry as one of the first employees to join Belharra Therapeutics, establishing a novel photoaffinity-based chemoproteomic platform and continuing to advance mass spectrometry and chemoproteomic techniques to accelerate drug discovery.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Soo is a Senior Scientist in the department of Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology at Genentech, where she utilizes SPR and other biophysical methods to enable hit finding and hit-to-lead development of small molecule therapeutics. Soo started her journey in small molecule drug discovery in the Protein Sciences group at AbbVie, providing biochemistry support to enable hit finding campaigns. She received her PhD at Northwestern University, where she investigated the structure and function of metalloenzymes and membrane proteins involved in methane oxidation via X-ray crystallography, mass spectrometry, and bacterial genetics. Soo enjoys the challenges of applying various biophysical techniques on challenging classes of druggable targets, in particular membrane proteins and large protein complexes, to drive mechanistic studies that can facilitate the development of therapeutics.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Tom Roddy has worked across many areas of the drug discovery pipeline over the past 20+ years, from pre-competitive academic collaborations through post-marketing studies. He is currently the Senior VP of Platform at Atavistik Bio, a series A biotech that uses a scalable approach to identify and harness highly conserved protein-metabolite interactions to identify novel regulatory allosteric sites for drug discovery. Previously, he was the Vice President of Metabolism and Proteomics at Agios Pharmaceuticals. His career started at Genzyme and he has worked at several other companies such as Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Merck, and Beryllium. He is an internationally recognized analytical scientist and an accomplished scientific team builder and mentor, having built and led many successful biomarker, analytical, and drug discovery teams. He is an author on ~80 publications in research focused on disease biology, pharmacology, and analytical sciences and has been a successful collaborator with leading global academic groups in the understanding of the mechanisms and physiology of metabolism-based therapies. He has made translational contributions to Fabrazyme, Myozyme, Idhifa, Tibsovo, Pyrukynd, Ivosidenib, and Vorasidenib. Tom received his PhD in Chemistry from The Pennsylvania State University, a MS in Chemistry from Villanova University, and a BS in Chemistry from Juniata College.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• RNA-Modulating Small Molecule Drugs

Ruben received his PhD from the University of California, Merced, in the laboratory of Rudy Ortiz. He studied the contribution of inappropriately activated renin-angiotensin system to the development of pancreatic dysfunction and insulin resistance. His postdoctoral training was in the laboratory of Holly Ingraham at the University of California, San Francisco, where he studied how Kisspeptin-expressing neurons regulate energy allocation. At Genentech, he is the in vivo team lead for MoA studies of the dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonists.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Senior executive and leader with more than 25 years of experience in the bio pharmaceutical industry with a record of successfully leading teams for the discovery and development of numerous medicines including Rezdiffra, dorzagliatin and bentracimab. Founder and CEO of Pep2Tango Therapeutics Inc., a new biotech company developing superior unimolecular multi-agonist peptides for obesity and related disorders. Member of the Health Council at TECNALIA and former member of the Board of Directors at Axcella (AXLA). Former President of Cellarity Inc. and former Senior Vice President of AstraZeneca (Medimmune), Head of Research and Development of Cardiovascular, Metabolic and Renal Diseases, where she led numerous programs that progressed from target identification to late-stage clinical trials. Prior to Astra-Zeneca, she held leadership positions at Hoffmann-La Roche and Abbott Laboratories where she led multiple programs. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, she was Associate Professor (Docent) of Molecular Medicine at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires. Her postdoctoral training was at the Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology at NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, USA. Authored more than 80 scientific publications and 9 patents. Inducted as a Member of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, Spain.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Sylvie received her BS with Honors at the University of California Irvine in 1993. She continued her studies organic chemistry and natural product synthesis with Professor Larry Overman and obtained her PhD at UCI in the fall of 1998. She started her career in industry at Agouron Pharmaceutical in the Chemical Research and Development as a research scientist and had the opportunity to lead a number of key projects within Pharmaceutical Sciences. Over a three-year period, while in Process Research, she worked on the development of the Rhino Virus (common cold) and HIV NNRTI programs. In 2001, she redirected her career to move to Medicinal Chemistry as a Senior Principal Scientist where she had the opportunity to continue to work in many antiviral programs at Warner Lambert now Pfizer. During the same period, she led the entire chemistry-sourcing strategy for Pfizer La Jolla. She held the Associate Director of Chemistry Sourcing leading all chemistry services for both Pfizer La Jolla (2006-2008) and in 2006-2007 expanded this role to manage Pfizer Nagoya Research Site chemistry sourcing needs. In mid-2008 to December 2018, she expanded her role as the West Regional Lead as Senior Director of (ERS) External Research Solutions based in Pfizer La Jolla in charge of Chemistry, Biology, Reagent Provision, and DMPK services in the pre-clinical sourcing area for many Pfizer Research Units. With re-alignment of focus in early 2018, she became the Head of ERS. Her responsibilities expanded to setting strategies/operation enablement for sourcing of Phase 1 API/Process enablement, global Pfizer solid inventory management, File Equity/Building Block, chemistry synthesis, analytical chemistry, and new technologies including DNA-encoded libraries/Degrader Platform, and RSC (reference standard commercialization). She is also leading multiple consortiums such as the BBXC (Building Block Exchange) and DNA-Encoded Library with multi-pharma companies. Her team’s work has led has impact on project like Paxlovid where ERS has been a key line contributor to support API/integrated sourcing research support to advance the discovery and enabling Phase 1 start. She has experiences in setting up innovative strategies and implementation of different working business models, evaluation of novel technologies in support of research, operations and integrative research, logistics, development of IT tools to support external collaborations for Pfizer with Asia/EU/North America partners. She works globally across matrix/multidisciplinary teams and working with Pfizer leaders to implement sourcing strategies to bring capacity, efficiency, and novel capabilities. She has been recognized in the area of research externalization with expertise in CRO management and integrated collaborations. She is current Executive Director and Head of ERS with a global team support all of Pfizer Medicine Design Sourcing.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

No bio available.

• Generative AI & Predictive Modeling

Dr. Susanta Samajdar is a medicinal chemist by training and has over 20 years of experience in Indian Biotech Industries. Dr. Samajdar has led multifunctional drug discovery teams producing many drug candidates across various target classes focused in oncology and inflammation therapeutic areas. Precision oncology and immuno-oncology remained two major area of interest for Dr. Samajdar over last few years. At present Dr. Samajdar is leading the drug discovery research at Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited, Bangalore, INDIA as Senior Vice President and Head of Discovery.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

No bio available.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators

Martin studied chemistry with a focus on natural product synthesis at Freie Universität Berlin, finishing his PhD in 2018. Following two years as a postdoc at UC Berkeley, he continued his career at the medicinal chemistry department of Boehringer Ingelheim in Vienna, where he mostly works on PROTAC approaches to oncology and infectious diseases.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Paul Scola received his PhD from Professor Steven Weinreb and The Pennsylvania State University, and thereafter assumed a postdoctoral position at Harvard University under the tutelage of Professor Yoshito Kishi. Paul then joined Bristol Myers Squibb, where he is currently Senior Director in the department of Discovery Oncology Chemistry. At BMS, Paul’s research efforts have included the discovery of small molecule antiviral agents for the treatment of hepatitis C infection. As part of that effort, Paul had the privilege of co-chairing the HCV NS3 protease inhibitor team which discovered BMS-650032 (asunaprevir), an approved treatment of HCV in combination with BMS’ daclatasvir. More recently, Paul has co-led full-phase discovery teams in oncology. An important outcome of the team’s effort is the discovery of BMS-986189, a macrocyclic peptide that is a potent inhibitor of PD-L1 and which progressed to the clinical stage.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Dr. Jack Scott obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of North Dakota in 1994 then moved on to Colorado State University where he obtained his Ph.D. under the guidance of Robert Williams. In 2001, Jack joined Schering-Plough as a senior scientist in the medicinal chemistry department. After the merger with Merck in 2009, Jack has worked in many facets of drug discovery including parallel medicinal chemistry, fragment-based lead design (FBLD), high throughput experimentation (HTE) and currently as the lead of the DNA encoded library (DEL) chemistry team. Jack has worked on teams that discovered multiple drug candidates including verubecestat, a BACE1 inhibitor that evolved from a fragment hit.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

I produce conferences in the drug discovery space, mostly on medicinal-chemistry related topics, for Cambridge Healthtech Institute. My portfolio includes multiple conference tracks at: Discovery on Target (Boston), Drug Discovery Chemistry (San Diego), and our newest launch: Drug Discovery Chemistry Europe (Barcelona). I've worked in biomedical communications for over 25 years—jumping into it as a science writer for a communications agency whose clients were biotech companies, right after earning my PhD in cell biology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. My undergraduate degree is from Princeton University where I majored in biology with a minor in 'Science in Human Affairs' which involved a lot of writing and I think foreshadowed my desire for a non-conventional scientific career path that enables me to play broader but indirect role in scientific innovation.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1
• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• GLP1 & Oral Peptides
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Justyna Sikorska is an NMR spectroscopist with her research interests comprising different aspects of the drug discovery process. Justyna completed her MS in the Faculty of Pharmacy, Medical University of Warsaw (2007), and her PhD in the Kerry McPhail group at the College of Pharmacy, Oregon State University (2012). During this time, her research was centered around natural product drug discovery and application of numerous spectroscopic techniques to screening, isolation, structure elucidation of natural products. In 2012 Justyna moved to EMBL Heidelberg to join Teresa Carlomagno group and worked on the application of Intermolecular NOEs for Pharmacophore Mapping (INPHARMA) method enabling determination of the ligand-binding mode. Since 2016, she is a member of the BioNMR group at Merck, where her research focuses on the implementation of NMR to various aspects of the drug discovery process.

• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Sunanda Singh, M.D., Ph.D., President, CEO and Chairman has served as the President, CEO and Chairman of Singh Biotechnology, LLC since he founded it in August 2015. Since 2011, Dr. Singh has served as Director of Immunology at GLG Pharma. From June 2000 to January 2021, he was in private practice as a Plastic, Reconstructive, Hand, and Cosmetic Surgeon in the Tampa Bay area. His private practice focused greatly on melanoma, non-melanoma skin cancers, trauma & burns, breast & wound reconstruction, and nerve surgery for patients. Prior to this he was a resident in Plastic Surgery at the University of South Florida, All Childrens Hospital, and Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa Bay from 1997-2020 and graduated as chief resident. Earlier he completed a full General Surgery residency at Temple University Hospital, Saint Christopher’s Childrens Hospital, and Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia from 1992 to 1997 and graduated as chief resident. At The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Dr. Singh enrolled in the prestigious NIH-funded Medical Scientist Training Program (M.D.-Ph.D. program) from 1985-1992. There his PhD research, done in Dr. Hans Schreiber’s laboratory, was in cancer immunology with a focus on tumor stroma where he demonstrated that the stroma can be manipulated for the immunological destruction of solid cancers. This was one of the earlier demonstrations of the tumor stroma playing an important in cancer therapy. At The College in The University of Chicago, 1981-1985, he majored in chemistry and graduated with honors. His honors thesis was on designing antibody drug conjugates and the research for this was done at Argonne National Laboratory.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators

Dr. Christopher R. Smith is the Executive Director for Drug Discovery at Mirati Therapeutics. Mirati is a targeted oncology company focused on targeted solutions for genetic and immunological drivers of cancer. Prior to Mirati, Christopher spent over a decade developing fragment-based approaches coupled with medicinal chemistry to discover development candidates across a range of therapeutic areas. For example, MRTX1719 and SGX523 for cancer and TAK-020 for inflammation. Christopher co-led the FBLD conference in San Diego in 2018 and is a strong advocate for fragment-based approaches in drug discovery. Christopher obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Glasgow and started his medicinal chemistry career at Pfizer, Sandwich in 1999.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Parthiban Srinivasan, an experienced data scientist, earned his PhD from Indian Institute of Science, specializing in Computational Chemistry. After his PhD, he continued the research at NASA Ames Research Center (USA) and Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). Then he worked at AstraZeneca in the area of Computer Aided Drug Design for Tuberculosis. Later, he headed informatics business units in Jubilant Biosys and then in GvkBio before he floated the company, Parthys Reverse Informatics and later an AI consultancy, Vingyani. Then he returned to academia as a Professor of Data Science at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal. Currently, Parthiban is a Professor and Director at the Center for AI in Medicine, Vinayaka Missions Research Foundation, AV Medical College and Hospital, Puducherry, India

• SC3: Fundamentals of Generative AI for Drug Discovery

Dr. Morgan Stanton is the CEO of Opal Therapeutics, a women’s health biotech company focused on innovative drug discovery for chronic gynecological disorders and pain. She has a PhD in Chemistry from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and completed her Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany. Her background in chemistry and tissue engineering, with a specialization in organoid models, has driven her career in disease phenotyping and drug discovery. Previously, she served for five years as Director of Discovery Biology at Herophilus, where she developed one of the first scalable brain organoid platforms for screening therapeutics in neurodegenerative diseases and created one of the pioneering industrial neuroimmune models. Under Dr. Stanton’s leadership Herophilus was acquired by Roche/Genentech in 2023. Her work has resulted in numerous patents and publications for tissue engineering in drug discovery.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1
• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Erland Stevens is formally trained as a synthetic organic chemist, with a PhD from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He specialized in nitrogen heterocycle synthetic methodology. After completing his postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, he joined the chemistry faculty at Davidson College in Davidson, NC. In addition to teaching organic chemistry, he created an undergraduate medicinal chemistry course and later published a textbook, Medicinal Chemistry: The Modern Drug Discovery Process, with Pearson Education. He then created an online medicinal chemistry course, which has been continuously revised and publicly available for approximately 10 years. He subsequently worked with Novartis to create additional online materials that are used with employees for continuing education purposes. He maintains an interest in the computational prediction of pharmacokinetic parameters based on structural features of drug-like structures.

• TS6B: Drug Exposure at the Target: The Role of ADME and Pharmacokinetics

I have a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and completed post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of Professor Neal Castagnoli at Virginia Tech. I have over 20 years pharmaceutical industry experience with over forty co-authored publications. I have spent most of my career at Pfizer in various roles within PDM (DMPK), supporting projects ranging from oncology to neuroscience and currently, Inflammation and Immunology (I&I). I am currently a Research Fellow, and my responsibilities include setting the DMPK research and project strategies within the I&I Research Unit. In addition, my team and I function as Project Representative within I&I while I also have responsibilities as a Research Project Lead for various Discovery programs. My interests include prediction of human ADME as well as exploring physicochemical properties and how they relate to ADME with a focus on absorption. PROTACs are of special interest given their unique beyond Rule-of-5 properties and the ADME challenges they present relative to classical small molecules.

• SC1: Protein Degraders: A Beyond Rule of Five Space and in vitro ADME Perspective

Chaohong Sun is a Sr. Research Fellow and Sr. Director in Discovery Research organization at Abbvie, where she leads an organization including protein sciences, different screening platforms, and structural biology to support Abbvie small molecule projects. She also heads up the lead discovery strategy team that is responsible to set and execute integrated lead generation strategies (including fragment-based approach, DEL and HTS) for Abbvie’s early portfolio targets. She received her Ph.D. from Dartmouth College in biophysical chemistry and then joined Abbott as a postdoctoral research fellow to study structures and functions of proteins involved in apoptosis pathway before becoming a staff scientist. She is coauthor of over 50 peer reviewed scientific publications and patents.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Dan Sutherlin is the Senior Vice President of Small Molecule Drug Discovery in the Genentech Drug Discovery organization where he leads a group of scientists in medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry, drug metabolism, and pharmaceutics to collaborate on the discovery and development of novel drug candidates in multiple therapeutic areas. His colleagues contribute to the progression of small molecule and related modalities in the gRED portfolio. He began his career in Medicinal Chemistry at Genentech in 1999.

• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Alex has built his career around applying machine learning to problems in biology. He has 13 years of experience in computational biology and 30+ publications spanning work at institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At RubrYc Therapeutics, Alex managed antibody discovery campaigns using machine learning to produce drug molecules with exquisite epitope-selectivity, leading to the company’s acquisition by iBio in 2022. Now, Alex is driving the development of iBio's machine learning branch for epitope-steered antibody discovery.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2

John Taylor is a Medicinal Chemistry Group Leader at Cancer Research Horizons, based at the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute in Glasgow. John joined CRUK in 2015, after over a decade’s worth of discovery experience at Eli Lilly, GSK, Evotec, and Syngenta. John leads a group of Chemists tasked with drugging novel and challenging targets that will bring the most benefit to cancer patients. John has a keen interest in Fragment-Based Lead Discovery, new modalities & enabling technologies, and their application to prosecuting previously undruggable targets.

• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Sarah Temkin, MD, works across the NIH to coordinate clinical research focused on the health needs of women. She has specific expertise in gynecologic cancers, cancer prevention, clinical trials, and health disparities. Her clinical research team oversees the Underrepresented, Underserved, and Underreported (U3) Program.

• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Reema Thalji has over 18 years experience in medicinal chemistry at GSK. She has broad experience leading teams in hit to lead and lead optimization efforts across multiple disease areas. She currently leads a team working on covalent and PROTAC platform builds. She received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a Louisiana native.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Result-oriented Computational Chemist with more than two decades of pharma industry experience in the application of Molecular Modeling to small molecule drug discovery. Key player in global pharmaceutical companies, Merck, Abbott, AbbVie. Technical skills and scientific strengths include 3D- and 2D-, ligand-based and structure-based drug design, as well as data mining and analysis. Strong competence as a team player, team builder, mentor, and group leader. Excels at creatively solving challenging problems that require tenacity and drive, and that involve multiple experts. Co-author of more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific articles and patents; two book chapters.

• SC8: Principles of Drug Design: Ligand-Receptor Interactions and More
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Minh is a Principal Scientist at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine. She joined JJIM's Discovery Chemistry team in 2020, where her projects have spanned across different modalities and therapeutic areas. Before joining JJIM, she was a Senior Scientist at Pharmaron UK, Hoddesdon, working on process development and GMP deliveries. Minh completed her DPhil in 2019 at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Prof Martin Smith, where she worked on the total synthesis of obscurinine.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Dr. Masoud Vedadi is a Senior Investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), and a Senior Scientific Advisor in Drug Discovery Department. He is also an Associate Professor, department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto. The research in his lab has been focused on early-stage drug discovery for more than 20 years, biochemically and biophysically characterizing drug targets in vitro and discovery of potent and selective modulators of their functions, towards development of therapeutics for cancer and other diseases.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Anastasia Velentza is the Founder of AVeNew Insights LLC, drug discovery business consulting and services. Previously, she was the Head of Discovery Technology at Plexium, a TPD company. Anastasia has 23 years in drug discovery, with expertise in discovery biology and molecular pharmacology across multiple therapeutic areas, modalities, and targets. Before Plexium, she held positions of increasing responsibility at Novartis, Dart Neuroscience, and Ferring Pharmaceuticals. Anastasia was NIH Research Award scholar in a drug discovery training program at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. She earned her Bachelor of Science in chemistry at the University of Patras in Greece, and a PhD from the same institution in bioorganic chemistry, funded by a competitive scholarship and EU programs.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Jennifer Venable is a Senior Scientific Director in Medicinal Chemistry at Janssen Research & Development, based in San Diego, CA where she is the Site Head of Discovery Chemistry. Her current primary responsibility is to drive delivery of small molecule clinical candidates and the Targeted Protein Degradation Platform within Janssen across therapeutic areas including Immunology, Neuroscience and Oncology. She received her PhD in organic chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Professor Phil Magnus in 2001. Subsequently, she joined the Janssen immunology group in La Jolla as a medicinal chemist in 2002 focusing on the discovery of small molecule ligands for kinases, GPCR, transporter, and protein-protein interaction targets. With over 15 years of industrial experience, Jennifer is a successful drug discovery leader with a track record of delivering development candidates that have entered the clinic. As a project leader across immunology programs, she has developed broad drug design knowledge targeting oral, inhaled, GI-targeting, and irreversible therapies. She has leveraged her expertise in medicinal chemistry, organic synthesis, SBDD, PK/PD relationships, and ADME optimization in working with multi-disciplinary cross-functional teams both internally and externally.

• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery

Dr. Wang received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Peking University and PhD in physical organic chemistry from the Ohio State University. As a postdoc at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he worked in the field of drug delivery and nanomedicine. His independent research centers on chemistry and serves biology, spanning from chemical biology tools and method development to rational design of therapeutics, including small molecule inhibitors, protein degraders, and antibody-drug conjugates. His scientific contribution has been recognized by multiple awards including the Distinguished Faculty Award from Chinese-American Chemistry & Chemical Biology Professors Association and Michael E. DeBakey, MD, Professorship in Pharmacology.

• Emerging Technologies for Discovery Chemistry
• Fragment-Based Drug Discovery
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

UC Berkeley undergraduate in Chemical Biology (structural biology), Caltech PhD in Chemistry (protein glycosylation in neurodegeneration), Novartis postdoc (high throughput screening, target deconvolution), 4+ years at Pfizer (chemical biology/target engagement), 3 years at Belharra, Texas, a chemoproteomics drug discovery biotech (high-throughput chemoproteomics).

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators

Dr. Dongdong Wang graduated from Fudan University with a PhD in Chemical Biology. He subsequently completed his postdoctoral research at Princeton University, focusing on reinforced dynamics, protein folding, protein structure refinement, and protein design. He is the main developer of Reinforced Dynamics (RiD). As a researcher dedicated to the field of "AI for Science," he has advanced a synergistic approach that combines artificial intelligence, molecular simulation, and experimentation. He developed the RiDYMO drug discovery platform, effectively targeting "undruggable" targets such as c-Myc, ß-catenin, and GPX4. Dr. Wang has published multiple papers, including Nature Computational Science.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators

Charles Wartchow is a collaborative, multi-disciplinary scientist with expertise in protein biochemistry (post-doctoral studies, The University of California, Berkeley), organic chemistry (PhD, The Ohio State University), and analytical methods. He developed his extensive drug discovery experience at Roche and Novartis, working in areas ranging from fragment-based screening and DNA-encoded library work to high-throughput biochemical and phenotypic screening campaigns. His current focus is the application of biophysical methods including SPR, BLI, and SHG to the validation and discovery of small molecule starting points for complex protein targets in oncology, virology, bacteriology, and inflammation. Dr. Wartchow is an enthusiastic project leader and frequent collaborator with members of the disease biology, protein sciences, CADD, and chemistry groups.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

No bio available.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Michael Won did his postdoctoral research in Dr. Ben Cravatt’s Lab at the Scripps Research, where he studied functional effects of DNA-dependent covalent ligands targeting the oncogenic transcription factor FOXA1. Before joining the Cravatt lab, he was a helicopter crew in the army, providing rides for the generals. He completed PhD from the University of Michigan, where he studied the structure, function, and inhibition of protein depalmitoylases in Dr. Brent Martin’s lab.

• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators

Peng Wu is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine. Before joining the faculty at TSRI, Peng was an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and the Scientific Director of the Chemical Biology Core Facility at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York. The research in the Wu laboratory integrates synthetic chemistry with glycobiology to explore the cellular and molecular mechanisms that control immune responses toward cancer and human pathogens. His recent awards include: 2020 Horace S. Isbell Award, Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry, American Chemical Society, 2021 Horizon Prize (Robert Robinson Award in Synthetic Organic Chemistry), the Royal Society of Chemistry (with the teams of K. Barry Sharpless, Jeff Kelly, John Moses, Jianmei Lu, Dennis Wolan, Bruce Hammock and Han Zuilhof) and 2021 Glycobiology Significant Achievement Award, the Society for Glycobiology.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1

Dr. Hao Wu is currently Scientist 4 at Genentech, Departments of Early Discovery Biochemistry, Peptide Therapeutics Division. He has been involved in many projects to improve the drug-like properties of peptides, using rational design, structure-guided design, and combinatorial chemistry approach. Before joining Genentech, Dr. Wu had postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute – Florida using peptidomimetics targeting intracellular targets, and obtained his Ph.D. in Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, training in organic chemistry, developed small molecule microarray platform for PPI inhibitor discovery.

• GLP1 & Oral Peptides

Dr. Xiangshu Xiao is Professor of Chemical Physiology and Biochemistry at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). His research focuses on cancer chemical biology with a particular interest on targeting nuclear proteins with both inhibitors and degraders. He obtained his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at Purdue University in 2005 with Prof Mark Cushman followed by a postdoctoral training at UT Southwestern Medical Center with Prof Thomas Kodadek from 2005-2007. He started his Assistant Professorship in 2007 at OHSU and has been there ever since. He was Chair of NIH’s Drug Discovery and Molecular Pharmacology C (DMPC) study section from 2021-2023.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2

Jingjing is a senior scientist in MedChem department at Amgen Thousand Oaks. She obtained her undergraduate degree in chemistry (2014) and master in analytical chemistry (2015) from University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Jingjing received her PhD in organic chemistry in 2022 from Boston College under the supervision of Professor Peter X. Zhang, where she is working on cobalt porphyrin catalyzed asymmetric radical transformations. Right after her PhD, she joined Amgen. Since then she has been involved in three different oncology projects that have provided her numerous valuable experience.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Hua Xu received his PhD in Chemistry from Stony Brook University. After conducting his post-doctoral research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he joined Pfizer in 2013, and later received ACS Young Investigator Award in 2016. He led the chemical biology efforts for a number of Pfizer’s drug discovery programs in several therapeutic areas, such as immunology and inflammation, rare diseases, and cardiovascular & metabolic diseases. Hua then worked as Associate Director of Chemical Biology at Cygnal Therapeutics from 2020 to 2021, and built the chemical biology platform to support small molecule drug discovery programs and facilitate target discovery. Hua currently leads Chemical Biology and Proteomics group at AstraZeneca that leverages chemical tools and proteomics technologies to enable target discovery and supports projects across therapy areas.

• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies

Ken Yamada is Associate Director of Frontier Chemistry at Novartis Biomedical Research in Cambridge MA. Ken obtained B.S. in chemistry at Brown University, M.S. in organic chemistry at UCLA, and PhD at University of Tokyo under guidance of Prof. Tohru Fukuyama. He has over 20 years of experience in drug discovery at Novartis and Yamanouchi (now Astellas) combined. Ken has contributed to and led small molecule projects leading to a number of development candidates and clinical stage molecules in cardiovascular, immunology and hematology indications. In the past decade, Ken’s research interests evolved around drugging the undruggables by combination of novel modalities and technologies. In particular, he was an early adaptor of TPD at Novartis and, to harness its full potential, spearheaded an internal incubator project that built microfluidic-based phenotypic DEL platform from ground up. Most recently, Ken is co-leading the efforts to leverage AI/ML to accelerate medicinal chemistry at Novartis.

• DNA-Encoded Libraries

Jingwei Yin is a scientist II at Revolution Medicines. He received his PhD in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis. During the graduate studies, he was trained by Prof. Vladimir Birman as a synthetic chemist. He worked on making phenazine-based foldamers as molecular switches and developing kinetic resolution methodologies for cyclic hydroxamic acids. Upon graduation, he joined Revolution Medicines where he works as a lead chemist on a TCI project.

• Protein-Protein Interactions

Wendy Young, PhD, is a biotechnology, pharma, and life sciences executive and board advisor with more than 30 years of experience in the discovery and development of new medicines for patients. She currently serves as a board member and scientific advisor at several venture capital backed start-up companies and is an advisor at Google Ventures. Previously, Wendy was an executive partner at MPM Capital, where she actively supported investments and new company builds. Prior to this role, she was the Senior Vice President, Small Molecule Drug Discovery at Genentech, where for 15 years she actively built and led the research & discovery organization. Under her leadership, more than 25 clinical candidates progressed into development. Additionally, Wendy led the BTK discovery program and is co-inventor of fenebrutinib, which is currently in Phase 3 trials for multiple sclerosis. Prior to joining Genentech, Wendy held roles of increasing scientific leadership at Celera Genomics and Scios, a J&J company. Wendy is an inventor and/or author on more than 70 published patents and manuscripts. Wendy earned her PhD in chemistry from Princeton University under the guidance of E.C. Taylor and was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratories of Samuel Danishefsky at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 2
• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1
• DNA-Encoded Libraries
• Drugging Transcription Factors & Regulators
• Protein-Protein Interactions
• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 2
• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Donglu Zhang is a Senior Fellow in DMPK at Genentech. He is interested in applying drug metabolism studies in drug design and development of both small molecule, protein degraders, and antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) drugs. He has done numerous human mass balance studies, investigated pharmacokinetic drivers for efficacy of modalities, designed drug delivery approaches, and involved in IND, NDA/BLA submissions. He received the Sir James Black Award for discovery of and original research on Eliquis from British Pharmacological Society (2018), and the Ondetti and Cushman Award for invention of mass defect filtering method (MDF) from Bristol-Myers Squibb (2007). He has co-authored 130 peer-reviewed articles. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of Utah.

• Degraders & Molecular Glues – Part 1
• SC5: Protein Degraders: An in vivo ADME and Safety Perspective

Senior Scientist, Structure Biology, Revolution Medicine.

• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies

Dr. Hang Zheng is the Chief Engineer of Biomedicine R&D and a Senior Researcher at DP Technology. He earned his PhD from Peking University and has authored over ten research papers in leading journals and conferences, including JACS Au, NeurIPS, and ICLR. Dr. Zheng spearheads the development of advanced tools like Uni-Dock, Uni-GBSA, Uni-FEP, Uni-Mol, Uni-QSAR, and Uni-pKa, leveraging AI for Science to tackle critical challenges in drug design. His work integrates machine learning with physical simulations, driving innovation in computational drug discovery.

• AI/Machine Learning for Early Drug Discovery – Part 1

Dr. Jia Zhou is a professor and Director of Chemical Biology Program at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). He obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from Nankai University, and pursued his postdoctoral training in organic and bioorganic chemistry at the University of Virginia, as well as medicinal chemistry and drug discovery at Georgetown University Medical Center. With 7-year industrial research experience in US pharmaceuticals, he joined the faculty at UTMB in 2010, and is currently a tenured professor, John D. Stobo, MD, Distinguished Chair, and a distinguished inaugural holder of Edith & Robert Zinn Chair in Drug Discovery. He is also a faculty member of Center for Addiction Sciences and Therapeutics, Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Sealy Center for Molecular Medicine, and Sealy Institute for Drug Discovery at UTMB. Dr. Zhou’s research interest is centered on drug discovery and development of novel small molecules as potential therapeutics for the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders, cancer, inflammation, and infectious diseases. He is an author of more than 240 peer-reviewed articles (Citations >12,500; h-index: 56; i10-index: 206) in prestigious journals such as Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Cancer Cell, PNAS, JCI, Nature Communications, Molecular Cell, and eight book chapters as well as an inventor of 34 patents. Dr. Zhou is a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow, and the Editor-in-Chief of Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, Associate Editor of Genes & Diseases, as well as the Editorial Advisory Board member of Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

• Covalent & Induced Proximity-Based Therapies

Thomas M. Zollner is the Lead of the Reproductive Health Cluster in Research & Early Development CVRI (Cardiovascular, Renal, Immunology). Thomas has a broad research & clinical experience from cardiology, nephrology, dermato-oncology & dermato-immunology. Thomas is board certified dermatologist & allergologist and associate professor at Frankfurt University Medical School. More recently, he has focused his research in the last 17 years on Women’s Health since he took over the leadership for Women’s Health / Gynecological Therapies / Reproductive Health bringing with his team several compounds into clinical development. Thomas authored > 100 research articles, mainly in the fields dermato-immunology, women’s health & drug discovery.

• Drug Discovery in Women's Health

Henry van den Bedem is Senior Vice President of Machine Learning Research & Cheminformatics at Atomwise, Inc. Henry concurrently holds an Associate Adjunct Professor appointment with the Department of Therapeutic Sciences and Bioengineering at the University of California at San Francisco and was a 2018-2020 Mercator Fellow with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the German equivalent of the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Before joining Atomwise, Henry led a research group in computational structural protein dynamics at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University. His research group was funded by the US National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Energy, and by pharmaceutical companies. Henry holds a PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an MS from the Delft University of Technology, both in mathematics. He is the author of 158 peer-reviewed scientific publications and numerous open-source scientific software packages. He qualified for multiple Ironman World Championships and has been an All-American athlete (triathlon) since 2019.

• Generative AI & Predictive Modeling