RICT 2024

Yimon Aye was born and raised in Burma. She moved to the UK to study for sixth form (high school) and then read chemistry at Oxford University, UK. She moved to Harvard University, USA, achieving a Ph.D. in organic chemistry under the supervision of Prof. David A. Evans. She then moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) to research the cellular and biochemical regulatory mechanisms of the enzyme ribonucleotide reductase with Prof. JoAnne Stubbe. In her independent career at Cornell University that began in mid-2012, she set out to understand the detailed mechanisms of electrophile signaling. This impetus culminated in the development of “REX” technologies (T-REX™ delivery and G-REX™ profiling). In a parallel research program distinct from redox-dependent cell signaling, she studies proteins/pathways involved in mammalian genome maintenance and nucleotide signaling, including the mechanisms of anticancer agents in clinical use. As of August 2018, she is leading the Laboratory of Electrophiles And Genome Operation (LEAGO) at ISIC, EPFL (Switzerland) as a tenured associate professor. Since January 2022, she has been serving as an associate editor of ACS Chemical Biology.

Max Bonomi is a computational structural biologist, group leader at Institut Pasteur (Paris, France) and Research Director at CNRS. His group is active in the development and application of integrative approaches that combine computational and experimental techniques to determine structural and dynamic properties of biological systems. MB is also the creator and core developer of PLUMED (www.plumed.org), state-of-the-art software that implements advanced molecular modelling techniques for molecular simulations.

Alessio Ciulli studied chemistry in Florence, Italy, and obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2006. After postdoctoral research in Cambridge and a brief visit at Yale University in the USA, he returned to Cambridge in 2009 to start his independent laboratory. In 2013, he moved to the University of Dundee, UK, where he was promoted to full professor in 2016. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including most recently the Prous Institute – Overton and Meyer Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2023. He is the scientific founder of Amphista therapeutics, a targeted protein degradation company spin out of his laboratory, and the founder and director of the University of Dundee’s new Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation which opened in January 2023.

Dr Uwe Grether earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry with Professor Herbert Waldmann in 2000 at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. After that, he joined Professor James D. White’s group at Oregon State University for his postdoctoral research. In 2001, Dr Grether started at the Pharma Research and Early Development unit of F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. in Basel, Switzerland. He has long-standing professional experience in drug discovery and development with a strong focus on holistic approaches toward a clinical end-goal reaching advanced stages up to phase 3 clinical trials with multiple new molecular entities. Dr Grether’s research interests include medicinal chemistry, late-stage functionalization and chemical biology.

Michael Gütschow studied Biochemistry at the University of Leipzig, Germany. He received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 1987 under the supervision of Prof. Günther Wagner. Until 1993, he was working as Scientific Assistant at the Department of Biosciences at the University of Leipzig. In 1993, he became a Postdoc at the Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Atlanta, with Prof. James C. Powers. He received his Habilitation in 1998. Gütschow held several short visiting fellowships, for example at the Friedrich-Miescher-Institute Basel, and Novartis Basel, Switzerland. Since 2001, he is Professor for Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Bonn. He was the head of the Department of Pharmacy and director of the Pharmaceutical Institute. His research interests include (i) peptidic and peptidomimetic drugs (ii) design of inhibitors and activity-based probes for cysteine and serine proteases (iii) development of proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) (iv) synthesis of bioactive heterocycles and (v) biochemistry of enzyme-drug interactions. He published more than 320 papers to the scientific topics mentioned.

Dr Satoshi Hashimoto obtained his PhD in the field of natural product synthesis at The University of Tokyo. In 2018, he joined Chugai Pharmaceutical as a medicinal chemist to start drug discovery of macrocyclic peptides. During his career, he worked at Roche in Basel for two years on the collaboration projects of macrocyclic peptides and went back to Chugai in 2024.

Angela Mackay received her undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh before obtaining her Ph.D. in total synthesis of natural products from the University of Cambridge, UK, under the guidance of Professor Ian Paterson. After postdoctoral studies with Professor Stephen Buchwald at MIT, Angela joined IRBM/Merck Research Labs in Pomezia, Italy in 2004. There she worked on anti-viral targets before moving to Novartis Biomedical Research, Basel in 2009. Angela is currently an Associate Director and group leader in immunology.

Dr Lisa Marcaurelle is an Executive Director and Senior Fellow at GSK where she is the Head of the Encoded Technologies platform within Molecular Modalities Discovery. Lisa obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2001 from the University of California, Berkeley working with Professor Carolyn Bertozzi and did post-doctoral research at MIT with Professor Peter Seeberger. She began her industry career at Infinity Pharmaceuticals in 2002 before joining the Broad Institute in 2007 as a Director in the Chemical Biology platform. In 2011 she returned to biotech as one of the founding members of H3 Biomedicine as VP of Discovery Chemistry. In 2015 she joined Warp Drive Bio focusing on the discovery of molecular glues, leading a DEL collaboration with GSK which ultimately led to her transition to GSK in 2018. Lisa is an active member of the American Chemical Society and was named an ACS Fellow in 2021. She has served as Chair of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry and is a member of the ACS Women Chemists Committee.

Emmanuel Meyer studied Chemistry at ETH Zürich and Imperial College, London and completed his PhD in the group of Prof. François Diederich at the ETH. Following post-doctoral studies with Prof. Amos B. Smith, III at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, he joined in 2005 Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd in Allschwil, Switzerland, as a medicinal chemist. From 2017 on, he pursued his career at Idorsia Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Allschwil, Switzerland, where he was project leader. During his career, Dr Meyer has worked primarily on GPCRs for cardiovascular and immunological diseases. He is the coauthor of over 30 publications, reviews and patents. Together with the Idorsia-Actelion team, he has contributed to two clinical compounds and he is the inventor of a drug currently in phase I for recent-onset type 1 diabetes.

Jay Schneekloth is a Senior Investigator and head of the Chemical Genetics Section in the Chemical Biology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, MD. He earned his A.B. from Dartmouth College in 2001. He then moved to Yale University where received his Ph.D. under the direction of Prof. Craig M. Crews, where he designed the first cell-permeable protac molecules. He then pursued an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Erik Sorensen at Princeton University, where he designed cascade reactions applied to the total synthesis of analgesic alkaloid natural products. In 2011, Dr. Schneekloth was recruited to the National Cancer Institute. At the NCI, his research focuses on understanding nucleic acids as targets for small molecules, particularly in the area of cancer therapeutics. His work encompasses development of high throughput screening techniques, chemical biology probe design/development, biophysical characterization of target-ligand interactions, target validation, and studying the structure and conformational dynamics of nucleic acids. Dr. Schneekloth is currently the Chair of NCI’s Medicinal Chemistry Accelerator, a program aimed toward translational development of novel biologically active small molecules discovered within the NCI.

Peter H. Seeberger studied chemistry in Erlangen (Germany) and completed a PhD in biochemistry in Boulder (USA). After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Research in New York he advanced to tenured Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry at MIT. After six years as Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich he assumed positions as Director at the Max-Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and Professor at the Free University of Berlin in 2009. In addition, he serves as honorary Professor at the University of Potsdam. From 2003-2014 he was Affiliate Professor at the Sanford-Burnham Institute for Medical Research (La Jolla, USA). Since 2021, he is a Vice President of the German Research Foundation (DFG) the main funding body in Germany. Since 2023, Seeberger is the Founding Director of the “Center for the Transformation of Chemistry” that received €1.25 billion funding. He is a member of the governing body of the Max-Planck Society (“Senate”) and the Veterinary University (TiHo) Hannover (“Stiftungsrat”).

Professor Seeberger’s research on the chemistry and biology of carbohydrates, carbohydrate vaccine development and continuous flow synthesis of drug substances spans a broad range of topics from engineering to immunology and has been documented in over 660 peer-reviewed journal articles, four books, more than 60 patents, over 200 published abstracts and more than 950 invited lectures. He is one of the editors of the standard textbook “Essentials of Glycobiology”. His work was recognized with more than 40 international awards from the US (e.g. Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Award, Horace B. Isbell Award, Claude S. Hudson Award from the American Chemical Society), Germany (e.g. Körber Prize for European Sciences, Wissenschaftspreis des Stifterverbandes, Emil Fischer Medal), Holland (Havinga Medal), Israel (Honorary Lifetime Member Israel Chemical Society), Japan (Yoshimasa Hirata Gold Medal), Switzerland (“The 100 Most Important Swiss”), the Philippines (“Gusi Peace Prize”), the Czech Republic (Dr. h.c. Univ. Chem. Tech. Prague) and international organizations (Whistler Award 2012, Int. Carboh. Soc.). In 2013 he was elected to the Berlin-Brandenburg (Prussian) Academy of Sciences.

Peter H. Seeberger greatly supports the idea of open access publishing as the Editor-in-Chief of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry and serves on the editorial advisory boards of many other journals. Through his work in the area of neglected diseases, Peter Seeberger has become involved in philanthropic causes. He is a co-founder of the Tesfa-Ilg “Hope for Africa” Foundation that aims at improving health care in Ethiopia that recently helped to build a bed-net factory and established an IT training center.

The research in the Seeberger laboratory has given rise to nine successful companies in the USA, Switzerland, Denmark and Germany.

Ed holds the GSK Chair in Chemical Biology at Imperial College London, a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute, and academic founder of Myricx Pharma, a spinout developing his lab’s research into clinical applications. Following his PhD (2000) with Steve Ley in Cambridge and postdoctoral research in Paris as an 1851 Fellow and Howard Trust Fellow, he was awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship in 2006 to start his group at Imperial College. He sits on the advisory boards of several international research institutes and biotechs, and develops drug discovery technologies with companies including Pfizer, GSK and AstraZeneca. His research has been recognised by awards and Fellowships, most recently the 2019 Sir David Cooksey Translation Prize, the 2020 Corday-Morgan Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a 2022 Cancer Research UK Programme Award. In 2023 he was appointed to the GSK Endowed Chair in Chemical Biology at Imperial College.

The Tate lab develops novel chemical biology approaches to enable drug discovery against post-translational modification (PTM) pathways and intractable drug targets, including chemical proteomic target identification, screening technologies, and chemical probe discovery for protein-protein interactions and enzymes modulating PTMs. Recent highlights include the first cell-active activity-based probes (ABPs) for deubiquitinases (DUBs), new tools for analysis and discovery of pathogenic secreted protease activities, and the first comprehensive maps of specific classes of protein lipidation PTM through chemical proteomics. We are also interested in new modalities including antibody-PROTAC conjugates, and translation of drug candidates

Olalla Vázquez is Full Professor for Chemical Biology at Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany). Her research focuses on the design and synthesis of innovative chemical biology tools capable of sensing biological processes, and remotely controlling the cellular machinery behind relevant disease-related processes. Olalla graduated in Chemistry from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in 2004 (with honours). She obtained her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Mascareñas and Prof. Vázquez, working on synthetic transcription factors and fluorescent DNA binders (2010). As FPU fellow, Olalla was a visiting PhD student at Harvard University in the group of Prof. Verdine (2006), and at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with Prof. Seitz (2008). In 2011 she received the Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellowship and returned to the group of Prof. Seitz to explore RNA template-directed reactions in the context of cancer therapy. In summer 2014, Olalla was appointed to a tenure-track Assistant Professorship at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where she was entrusted with the mission of managing the new Chemical Biology division together with Prof. Meggers. In April 2020 Olalla successfully passed her tenured evaluation, and consequently, she was promoted to Associate Professor of Chemical Biology (W2) in January 2021. In 2022 she was offered a Professorship for Organic Chemistry for Protein Research at Paris Lodron University Salzburg, which was declined for a Full Professorship at Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany).

During her career path Olalla has published papers in high-impact journals as well as received national and international awards, including the VII Lilly Research Awards (2009), European Young Chemist Award (2012), Fulbright-Cottrell Award (2016), Best European Young Researcher in Chemical Biology (2020), Ars Lengindi Fakultätenpreis (2021) and EFMC Prize for a Young Chemical Biologist in Academia (2022).

Bert Windhorst was trained as a medicinal chemist and currently holds the chair of radiopharmaceutical chemistry at the department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Amsterdam UMC. His research is focused on radionuclide production, radiochemistry methods, design and evaluation of radiopharmaceuticals and translation towards clinical research, with focus on oncology and neurology. Several new PET radiotracers have been developed from preclinical towards clinical research under his supervision and in close collaboration with clinical researchers of Amsterdam UMC. Currently his research has a main focus on development of PET tracers for neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration, next to use of PET in drug development in collaboration with pharma. His research group comprises 36 FTE, amongst which are 2 staff scientists, 2 post-docs and 7 PhD students. In addition he is editor-in-chief of Nuclear Medicine & Biology and fellow of the Society of Radiopharmaceutical Sciences.

Dr Gavin W. Collie obtained his Ph.D. from the UCL School of Pharmacy in 2012. He then completed postdoctoral positions at the European Institute of Chemistry and Biology (Bordeaux, France) and the Institute of Cancer Research (London, UK). He is currently an Associate Principal Scientist at AstraZeneca, focusing on structural biology and cancer drug discovery.

Werngard Czechtizky is Head of Medicinal Chemistry for Respiratory & Immunology at AstraZeneca. She has a track record of delivery of clinical candidates and lead compounds across several therapeutic areas (CV, Diabetes, Pain, CNS, Respiratory, Immunology). She has implemented state of the art technologies such as ML/AI methods, New Modalities, automated synthesis and integrated physchem & eADME profiling workflows into Medicinal Chemistry departments. Werngard serves on diverse scientific advisory boards and is co-/author of ca 100 publications and patents. She has studied at the Technical University of Graz, Austria, received a PhD from ETH Zürich and a postdoctoral training at Harvard University. Before joining AZ in 2017, she has been working at Aventis, then Sanofi at Frankfurt, Germany.

Dr Taiana Maia de Oliveira studied Biological Sciences and completed a Master’s Degree at Universidade Federal do Ceará. received her Ph.D in Structural an Molecular Biology from the University of Tromsø, Norway. She joined the EMBL-Grenoble in 2012 as a postdoctoral fellow, and applied Single Particle Cryogenic Electron Microscopy to investigate the structure of TOR complex 2. She joined Astrazeneca in 2016, and since then she has worked on establishing and expanding cryo-EM in the company in order to bring challenging large multiprotein complexes and membrane proteins into the realm of Structure based Drug Design.

Dr Pauline Poinot was first graduated from an engineering school before earning three years later her Ph.D. in aroma chemistry at the University of Nantes, France. After postdoc research in “omics” science, she was recruited as an assistant professor at the Chemistry Institute at the University of Poitiers. From her multidisciplinary background, she has initiated in her lab a novel transdisciplinary research group that search for new chemobiological strategies to answer fundamental questions relating to the origin, function and process of living systems. As part of this program, her team has developed a new research area, called “induced volatolomics”, to explore, highlight and monitor in real time, biochemical and biological processes.

Geoffrey Schwertz did his undergade studies in Strasbourg, France. He holds an engineer degree from the “Ecole Européenne de Chimie, Polymères et Matériaux” of Strasbourg and a master degree in Molecular and Supramolecular Chemistry from the University of Strasbourg. During his master thesis in the laboratory of Prof. Françoise Colobert, he worked on the development of atroposelective sulfoxide-Directed Fujiwara-Moritani reaction. In 2013, he joined the laboratory of Prof. François Diederich at the ETH Zurich to perform his PhD thesis and he worked on the discovery of inhibitors for Serine Hydroxymethyltransferase, as an innovative approach to tackle the Malaria disease. Afterwards, Geoffrey did his postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. Janine Cossy at ESPCI Paris, working on Novel manufacturing technologies of Artemisinin (a natural product used as frontline therapy for Malaria patient). In 2019, he joined UCB Biopharma (Belgium, Brussels area) as medicinal chemist in discovery chemistry where he helps building our internal TPD platform and he has been working on several degraders programs since then.

Peng Wu is a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology. He earned his Ph.D. from Zhejiang University and performed his postdoc research first in Denmark and then at Broad Institute, Harvard, and MIT. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen before starting his research group in Dortmund. He received the 2020 SCT Award for Young Investigator in Medicinal Chemistry and the 2022 ICBS Young Chemical Biologist Award. The current interest of his group is in the development of small molecules and bifunctional molecules targeting the interactions between RNA-binding proteins and disease-associated RNAs.