Confirmed Speakers

Name:
Roderick L Beijersbergen PhD

Title:
Associate Professor and Director NKI Robotics and Screening Center

Research field:
Functional Genomics in Oncology

Education:
Biomedical Sciences, Leiden University
PhD Utrecht University


Former Professional experience:
AvL fellow The Netherlands Cancer Institute
Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. RA Weinberg, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, USA
Postdoctoral fellow with Prof. R Bernards, The Netherlands Cancer Institute
Research Associate, Harvard University, USA


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Cedric Boularan is currently a Research Investigator at InvivoGen in Toulouse (France). He obtained his PhD in Cochin Institute (Paris), moved to a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD) and then to Lifesearch, a biotech company. His research focused on in vitro and in vivo evaluation of mechanism regulating GPCR function for oncology, cardiology or immunology fields. His work has been published in major journals. He joined InvivoGen R&D department in 2015 to emphasize the preclinical proof of concept to use innate immune ligands (especially STING agonists) as onco-immuno-modulator.

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Philipp Holliger is a Program Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK. Phil graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich with Steven A Benner. He then moved to Cambridge for a Ph.D. and a postdoctoral fellowship with Sir Gregory Winter. In 2000, he joined the faculty at the LMB where he was tenured in 2005.

His research spans the fields of chemical biology, synthetic biology and in vitro evolution. His work has been published in major journals (e.g. Nature, Science, Cell etc.) and has led to numerous patents. His recent work, describing a range of novel synthetic genetic polymers (XNAs) was featured in Scientific American’s 10 World Changing Ideas (2012). He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and a consultant to several successful biotech companies including Cambridge Antibody Technology / Medimmune, Solexa / Illumina, Domantis and GSK.

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After obtaining his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Antwerp in 2003, Tim joined the Medicinal chemistry department of Tibotec, a Johnson & Johnson affiliate. In 2010, the Tibotec team moved to Janssen Pharmaceutica in Beerse, Belgium. Currently, he is Scientific Director at Janssen and holds the position of Head of Medicinal Chemistry, Infectious Diseases. His main research focus is the identification of new small molecule inhibitors -including novel nucleoside derivatives- useful for the treatment of viral diseases.

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Jens Kurreck is full Professor for Applied Biochemistry at the Berlin University of Technology (TUB), Germany. He studied biochemistry and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin (FUB) and completed his PhD at the TUB in 1998. A postdoc at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ, USA, was followed by an assistant professorship at the FUB. From 2007 to 2009 he was Professor of Nucleic Acid Technologies at the University of Stuttgart before attaining his current position in Berlin. In 2012 he was visiting professor at the Dongseo University in Busan, Korea. His research focuses on RNA technologies, bioprinting of 3D organ models, pain research and virology. He has published more than 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals, edited the book "Therapeutic Oligonucleotides", and published, together with Cy Stein, a textbook entitled “Molecular Medicine – an Introduction”. He received the Young Scientist Lectureship Award of the European Society for Neurochemistry and a prize for his excellent teaching.

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Henrik Möbitz is currently group leader and Senior Research Investigator, Global Discovery Chemistry at Novartis. In this role, he has lead medicinal chemistry projects and external collaborations. Prior to this, he studied enzyme mechanisms by use of biochemistry (PhD at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in 2003) and simulation (Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Barbara). Recent research projects target epigenetic methyl transferases, helicases, kinases and the MAPK pathway in particular, by integrating structure based design and data analysis.

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Jan Breitenfeld Ph.D. Workflow Architect Jan Breitenfeld joined Chemspeed in 2015 as Automation Chemist responsible for post sales activities. Since 2017, he is working as Workflow Architect focusing on high-throughput research & development workflow-solutions for single bench-top/standalone automated workstations. Prior to this, he was working as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CaRLa - Catalysis Research Laboratory set up by BASF and the University of Heidelberg focusing on homogeneous catalysis with potential industrial applications. Jan Breitenfeld holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and a diploma from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

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Elena Eremeeva is a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry, KU Leuven (Belgium). After completing her master’s degree in Chemistry, with Specialization in Biochemistry at Novosibirsk State University (Russia), she continued her research in nucleic acid chemistry as a research assistant at the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine (Novosibirsk, Russia). In 2011, she started her Ph.D. in the group led by Prof Piet Herdewijn (KU Leuven) where she performed in vitro evolution of artificial aptamers (HNA). Moreover, she recently succeeded in the development of the 3rd type of nucleic acid containing non-canonical bases (DZA) that can convey genetic information in leaving cells. Encouraged by the results obtained during her Ph.D., she intends to build the artificial genetic systems as a new tool towards advance therapy and synthetic biology.

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Mr Fabian Hulpia obtained his MSc in Pharmacy in 2013 at Ghent University. After which he joined the Lab for Medicinal Chemistry at Ghent University (led by Prof. Van Calenbergh) as a PhD student. His PhD work focusses on the synthesis of modified nucleoside analogs with broad spectrum applications.

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