EFMC-ACSMEDI Medicinal Chemistry Frontiers 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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