Confirmed Speakers

Karl-Heinz Altmann has been a professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the ETH Zürich since July 2003. From 1990-1996 he was a member of Ciba-Geigy’s Central Research Laboratories in Basel, where he worked on the design and synthesis of modified nucleosides as potential building blocks for antisense therapeutics. In 1997 he moved to Oncology Research within Novartis Pharma AG, where he was the project leader for the epothilone program. In 2000 he was appointed the Novartis Senior Chemistry Expert and from Jan. 2003 until his move to the ETH, he was the acting Global Head of Chemistry of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). Karl-Heinz Altmann’s research interests are at the interface between chemistry and biology, with a particular focus on the chemical synthesis and the biological and pharmacological profiling of biologically active natural products and their synthetic and semi-synthetic analogs.

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Dr. A. Beck is Director of Antibody Physico-Chemistry and member of the board of directors of the Centre d’Immunologie Pierre Fabre (CIPF). He contributed to the R&D of anticancer mAbs (dalotuzumab/IGF-1R with Merck, h224G11/cMet with Abbott, h515H7/CXCR4, h6F4/JAM-A), vaccines and peptides. He is inventor on 16 patents, author of 80 publications, associate editor of mAbs (www.landesbioscience.com) and guest editor for special issues on mAbs (Nat Rev Immunol, Curr Pharm Biotech, Medecine/ Sciences and Meth Mol Biol). He has contributed to 130 scientific meetings as chairman, invited speaker, panelist, moderator, advisor, and/or organizer. He is also regularly invited to boards of experts by the WHO, the EMA, the European Commission, Funding Agencies (Czech, Dutch, France, Ontario, New Zealand) and bio-clusters (Alsace Biovalley, CLARA, Genopole, LyonBiopole).

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Present research: Glycosaminoglycan (GAGs) are sulfated polysaccharides endowed with remarkable biological activities: they interact with numerous extracellular proteins, especially cytokines and chemokines, and control their biological activities. These interactions are often specific, since fine structural modifications of the polymer occur during its biosynthesis, allowing generating a huge molecular diversity. As organic chemists, we focus on the development of new methodologies in oligosaccharide synthesis, amenable to combinatorial multiparallel or split-pool strategies and their application to the preparation of bioactive glycosaminoglycan fragments, mimetics and peptide/GAG chimeras. The synthetic targets are defined in collaboration with glycobiologist in the framework of multidisciplinary projects. Our final goal is to identify GAG fragments able to control the biological activity of proteins involved in pathological processes (inflammation, autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, metastasis or HIV infection) and to demonstrate their efficiency as new drug candidates for human health.

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Claire Bouix-Peter, Ph.D. is head of Medicinal Chemistry at Galderma (Sophia Antipolis, France). Her research field focus mainly on topical administration to treat dermatological diseases. Experience in targeting enzymes, GPCR, Nuclear Receptors for dermatological indications like acne, steroid responsive disorders and pigmentary disorders. Education and past experience: Sanofi-Aventis : (2000-2001) : Chemist in Medicinal Chemistry ; Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Prof. B Trost, University of Stanford, U.S.A. (1999-2000) - Molybdenum-Catalyzed Asymmetric Allylic Alkylation - Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Prof. J. Eustache, Université de Haute Alsace (Mulhouse), France (1996-1999) - Stereoselective synthesis of arabinose-derived phosphonates

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Jack Brown is a medicinal chemistry team leader within the Epinova DPU at GSK Stevenage. Jack obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Strathclyde in 2007 following research undertaken within the laboratories of Professor Billy Kerr. Following completion of his PhD studies, Jack moved to GSK Stevenage where he has carried out research in both the respiratory and immuno-inflammation diseases areas. Jack has a breadth of experience across a range of molecular targets including Kinase, GPCR, and more recently, epigenetic disease targets.

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Ravi Chari is Executive Director of Chemistry & Biochemistry at ImmunoGen, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company located in Waltham, MA. His group is responsible for the development of potent cytotoxic compounds for tumor-specific delivery in the form of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). His group also designs novel linkers to generate ADCs with optimal anti-tumor activity. Dr. Chari received his doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Detroit, Detroit, MI. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Pharmacology department at the Yale University – School of Medicine, where he was in involved in the design and synthesis of mechanism-based enzyme inhibitors. In 1986, he joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School as a research scientist, where he initiated work on the use of monoclonal antibodies to specifically deliver cytotoxic drugs to tumor cells.

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Miles obtained a BSc in biological chemistry from Leicester University and a PhD in synthetic chemistry from Cambridge University, before joining Glaxo in 1993. He worked on a range of projects in both Lead Optimisation and Hit-to-Lead phases. He then moved to Cambridge in 1999 to manage the GlaxoWellcome Chemistry Laboratory in the University Chemistry Department to work on solid phase library technologies. In this role he initiated a number of collaborations with academics across the UK. In 2001 he joined Astex Technology (now Astex Pharmaceuticals) to establish the chemistry team and to develop and validate fragment-based drug discovery as a new approach to structure-based drug design and lead identification. The platform delivered success against a broad range of projects (collaborative and in-house), including six pre-clinical or clinical candidates. He joined Heptares in 2008 where his team have identified three pre-clinical candidates for CNS disorders to date. Miles is co-author of over 100 publications and patent filings.

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Dalvit studied biophysics at the University of Trento, Italy, and trained at the Carnegie-Mellon University, USA, The Scripps Research Institute, USA, and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He joined Sandoz (now Novartis), Switzerland in 1989 as lab head prior to his position in 1999 as head of the biomolecular NMR group at Pharmacia & Upjohn, Italy and then senior scientist in the Drug Discovery & Development Department of the Italian Institute of Technology. He joined the University of Neuchâtel in 2011 as NMR specialist in the SAF unit of the Institut de Chimie. His research interests are in NMR spectroscopy, from methodology development to its applications in chemistry and biology, fluorine chemistry, fragment-based drug discovery and enzymology. He is the recipient of the 2006 Gold Medal of the Italian society of magnetic resonance.

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Wolfgang Haap joined Roche in Basel, Switzerland in 2001. He is working as a lead chemist and expert scientist in medicinal chemistry in the field of lead identification and optimization up to clinical candidate selection. He is a member of the extended global chemistry leadership team. Before starting at Roche he spent from 1998 on three years at Ciba in Grenzach, Germany (now BASF) in the research area of the discovery of new antibacterials. Wolfgang Haap received his Ph.D. in 1998 in organic chemistry at the University of Tuebingen, Germany in the group of Prof. Guenther Jung.

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Dr Frank Halley is Team Leader in Oncology Drug Discovery and Preclinical Development in Sanofi. Research field : 22 years of experience in different therapeutic areas: cardiovascular (ACAT, angiotensin II, endothelin, PDGF and C5a), Respiratory/Inflammation (RANTES antagonists, prolyl-4-hydroxylase antagonists, VLA-4, CCR2, CCR3, CCR4 antagonists, p38 inhibitors, and cathepsin S inhibitors), anti-infective (Methionine Amino Peptidase and Secretases), oncology (angiogenesis KDR, Tie2, CDKs, IGF-1R,CDKs, HSP90, PI3K, MEK) and CNS (Alzheimer diseases, PDE4, PAK3, CK1).

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Michele Heffernan is a medicinal chemistry project leader at Sunovion Pharmaceuticals (formerly Sepracor) in Marlborough, MA, USA. Michele obtained her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Boston College in 1998 under the supervision of Professor Marc Snapper. She then joined Sepracor, and has worked in area of CNS Drug Discovery for the past 15 years, leading a number of projects from hit ID through lead optimization to Advanced Lead nomination. She has experience leading projects with a range of target classes including enzymes, GPCRs, and ion channels.

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Stephen Helliwell trained as a biochemist, and holds a BSc from the University of Kent and a PhD from the Biozentrum, University of Basel. During his PhD in Mike Hall’s lab, he helped to identify the targets of rapamycin-TOR, as well as downstream components of TOR signal transduction pathways in yeast. Following a short Post-Doctoral stay at the University of Bern with Hans Trachsel to protein synthesis and cell cycle control, he moved to Chris Kaiser’s lab at MIT and discovered novel ubiquitination factors controlling Golgi-to-endosome sorting of membrane proteins. Stephen returned to the Biozentrum to continue this research. He joined Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research in 2005 as part of the Chemical Modulators of Biology Unit within the Developmental and Molecular Pathways department. After 6 years in this unit, focusing on small molecule target identification using chemogenomic profiling, he is now a Senior Investigator leading a group interested in disorders caused by defective mitochondria. He continues to lecture at the Biozentrum, University of Basel.

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Jörg Hüser studied Biology at Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany). He received a Ph.D. in cellular physiology studying cardiac electro-mechanical coupling. After a four year postdoctoral training in the Department of Physiology, Loyola University Chicago, Maywood, IL, USA, he joined Bayer Pharma Research in Wuppertal, Germany, as a Scientist in the Institute of Molecular Screening Technology. Today, Jörg Hüser is heading this function, now called Lead Discovery Wuppertal. In addition, Jörg Hüser is the coordinator of a recently launched Innovative Medicine Initiative project called “European Lead Factory”.

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Jagath Junutula is Senior Scientist, Genentech Research and Development (gRED), Genentech, Inc. He joined Genentech, Inc. in 2001 and is currently a Senior Scientist in the Research and Early Development Division (gRED). He obtained his PhD in 1997 from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, and did post-doctoral research in Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow and at Stanford University. Jagath has over 10 years of experience in oncology drug discovery and development and more than 20 years of experience in the life science research as a biochemist/molecular cell biologist. Jagath gained knowledge and experience in moving antibody-based therapeutic molecules from discovery phase to IND. He has authored 50 peer-reviewed publications/patents and has presented his work at numerous international conferences. He received the INSA (Indian National Science Academy) Young Scientist Award for outstanding graduate research work, and the Shamrao Kaikini medal for the best PhD thesis in Biological and Chemical Sciences from the Indian Institute of Science. He is a member of the American Society for Cell Biology and the American Association for Cancer Research. He served as a President (2010-2011) of EPPIC, a non-profit organization that fosters entrepreneurial mentoring, partnering and networking among Pharma/Biotech professionals and has been a board member since 2010.

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Group Leader of Computational Chemistry, Evotec, UK. Ph.D studies (in computational chemistry) in Mark Sansom's group at the University of Oxford. Postdoctoral fellowship in computational chemistry with Andrew McCammon at the University of California, San Diego. Senior Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

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Professor Michel Lazdunski was the Founder and Director of the Centre de Biochimie (CNRS) in Nice, of the Institut de Pharmacologie Moleculaire et Cellulaire, CNRS/Université de Sophia Antipolis. His first research activities were in enzymology. He then gradually moved to ion transport systems and more specifically to the molecular analysis of ion channels. He and his team developed numerous new tools (toxins in particular) to analyze/discover the properties of Nav channels, Cav channels, all sorts of K+ channels, acid-sensitive ion channels, peptide-gated ion channels … always linking molecular studies with pharmacology, physiology and physiopathology. His current interest is for the discovery/implications of ionic channels important in ischemia and neuroprotection, pain and behavioral disorders.

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Paul Leeson is a medicinal chemist with more than 30 years experience in major pharmaceutical companies. He obtained BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry from the Universities of Liverpool and Cambridge, followed by postdoctoral work at Sussex University. His industrial career began at Smith Kline and French Research Laboratories, and has taken him to Merck Sharp and Dohme, then to Wyeth (USA), and from 1997-2011, AstraZeneca, where he was head of medicinal chemistry at the Charnwood site and leader of AstraZeneca’s Global Chemistry Forum. Since 2011 he has been a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline. His drug discovery contributions have been in the cardiovascular, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation therapy areas. He has a special interest in compound quality in relation to pipeline attrition.

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Ian Lewis studied chemistry at the University of Edinburgh between 1981 – 1985 and then carried out a Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh between 1985 – 1988 under the supervision of Professor R. Ramage on the synthesis of polyene teramic acid antibiotics. Subsequently Ian Lewis carried out a Royal Society Post-doctoral Fellowship at ETH Zürich between 1988 – 1990 in the research group of Professor A. Eschenmoser and then joined Novartis (originally Sandoz) in 1990, researching in the endocrinology and immune disease areas. Between 2001 – 2002 Ian Lewis was a Novartis Guest Scientist at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, in the group of Professor K. Barry Sharpless, during the time Professor Sharpless was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Since then Ian has carried out research in the Exploratory Medicinal Chemistry Unit of the Oncology Global Discovery Chemistry Organisation.

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Eric Lingueglia, 46, is Director of Research at INSERM, and is studying ion channels for over 20 years. He completed his Ph.D. in the laboratory of Prof. Michel Lazdunski and worked for two years in the Department of Cell Biology of Harvard Medical School in Boston. Since 2007, he leads the "Ion Channels and Pain" team at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology of the CNRS - University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. His team studies the properties and the role of ion channels in pain by combining molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, pharmacology including the discovery and the use of peptides derived from animal venoms and specifically targeting these channels, and animal behaviour. Recently Dr. Lingueglia’s team has identified a new class of peptides from black mamba venom, which are able to inhibit particular subtypes of Acid-Sensing Ion Channels to produce a potent analgesia in mice comparable to morphine but independent of opiates.

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May C. Morris is a CNRS Research Director at the CRBM-CNRS-UMR5237, Montpellier, France, where she heads the “Cell Cycle Bioprobes and Inhibitors” Group within the Chemical Biology and Nanotechnology for Therapeutics Team. After a PhD in cell cycle biology obtained at the University of Montpellier in 1997, she completed her training with two postdocs: the first involved targeting HIV reverse transcriptase (1997-1998, CRBM), the second focused on cell cycle regulation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (1998 to 2001, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA). In 2000, she was appointed as a CNRS Research Investigator in the Department of Biophysics of the CRBM, Montpellier, to study the molecular mechanisms of cell cycle regulation and develop strategies to target cell cycle enzymes for cancer therapeutics. Since 2010 her research has focused on the development of fluorescent bioprobes and inhibitors of cell cycle biomarkers for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. In 2006, she received the CNRS Bronze Medal, in 2007 Finalist of the Excellencia Prize, Women in Science, and in 2009 “Chercheuse d’Avenir” Languedoc-Roussillon Region. Editorial board member of ChemBioChem and Journal of Biosensors and Bioelectronics. Areas of expertise : inhibitors of protein/protein interactions ; fluorescent peptide biosensors; cell-penetrating peptides ; cancer and cell cycle biology; nanotechnology

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Jeremy C. Mottram is in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology, Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences, University of Glasgow. His laboratory works on parasitic protozoa that are the causative agents of the neglected tropical diseases leishmaniasis and Human African Trypanosomiasis. His main research interest is in the use of genetics to validate targets for drug development, with a focus on protein kinases and peptidases. Jeremy Mottram completed his BSc Hons in Biochemistry at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UK) and a PhD at the University of Glasgow. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Francisco before returning to the University of Glasgow, where he spent 10 years as a Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellow. He is currently Professor of Molecular and Cellular Parasitology.

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James Murray obtained his Ph.D. from The University of Leeds in 1996. The focus of the research was the structure and function of Ribozymes exploiting chemically engineered nucleosides. Subsequently, he took a Post-doctoral position with Professor William Scott at University of California, Santa Cruz. The main aspect was the application of time resolved crystallography to understand the mechanism of ribozyme function. In early 2001 he joined Vernalis to establish a crystallography group, initially focussed on drug discovery against the bacterial ribosome, subsequently moving to protein targets. He has developed a keen interest in improving drug discovery with a focus on the application of biophysical methods such as SPR and ITC. Currently he is the Director of Chemistry and Structural Sciences at Vernalis (R&D) Ltd.

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Robert M Owen is a medicinal chemist based at Pfizer Neusentis in the UK. He earned Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison under the supervision of Professor Laura Kiessling developing methods to understand and explore the role of multivalent interactions in biological systems (2003), followed by postdoctoral research with Professor William Roush at the University of Michigan on the total synthesis of Peloruside A. Robert joined Pfizer in 2007 and has worked on a broad range of target classes including GPCRs, kinases, enzymes and ion channels across a range of therapeutic areas. He is currently a medicinal chemistry project lead focusing on the identification of novel pain therapeutics.

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Laurent Saniere is therapeutic area head at Galapagos, responsible for oncology and anti-infectives portfolios. He received his Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Strasbourg in 2001. He joined Cerep as medicinal chemist where he got opportunities to work on GPCR and protease projects. After having moved to Galapagos in 2007, he led several drug discovery projects in the fields of inflammation and oncology, mainly focussing on GPCR antagonists and kinase projects. He occupied several positions in the medicinal chemistry department up to director of a unit until 2012.

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Hartmut Schirok studied chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, where he completed his doctoral work on the synthesis of cephalotaxine in the group of Prof Lutz F. Tietze in 1999. Subsequently, he carried out postdoctoral work at Stanford University, USA with Prof Barry M. Trost on ruthenium-catalyzed cycloaddition reactions. Hartmut joined the medicinal chemistry department of Bayer in Wuppertal, Germany in 2000. He is working as senior scientist in both early lead identification and late-stage compound optimization projects belonging to different therapeutic areas, especially cardiovascular and cancer research.

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Giulio Superti-Furga is an Italian molecular and systems biologist. He performed his undergraduate and graduate studies in Molecular Biology at the University of Zurich, at Genentech Inc. in San Francisco and at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and became Team Leader in 1995. From 1997 to 2000 he served as Guest Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Bologna. In 2000, he co-founded the biotech company Cellzome Inc. and served as Scientific Director. Since 2005 he is Scientific Director of CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Visiting Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Medical University of Vienna. Amongst his most significant scientific achievements to date are the elucidation of basic regulatory mechanisms of tyrosine kinases in human cancers and the discovery of fundamental organization principles of the proteome of higher organisms, which is one of the most highly cited papers in the field. His current work focuses on protein complexes, molecular networks and drugs relevant for leukemia and host immune defense mechanisms against pathogens. He is an advocate for the adoption of systems biology approaches for medicine and aims to bridge basic research and the clinical world.

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Jean-Philippe Surivet is Associate Director, Senior Lab Head in Anti-Infective Medicinal Chemistry at Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. He obtained his Ph.D degree in Organic Chemistry from the Université Claude Bernard – Lyon I with Pr J. Goré. After two years spent at Stanford University with Pr B.M. Trost, he joined, in 2001, Morphochem AG (Basel), a biotech company as medicinal chemist. In 2004, he moved to Actelion (Allschwil) where he further strengthened his expertise in the field of antibiotic research. His past research encompasses the discovery of novel classes of bacterial type II topoisomerase inhibitors and DNA Ligase inhibitors, both classes being potentially useful for the treatment of bacterial infections. He is currently leading a team of 8 researchers with the goal of identifying new agents effective against multidrug resistant Gram Negative pathogens. He is author or co-author of 19 scientific publications and more than 25 patents on antibacterial small molecules.

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Nuska Tschammer obtained her Bachelor and Master of Science Degree in Chemistry at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, and the Ph.D. degree in Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA. At present she is Independent Research Group Leader at the Division of Medicinal Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen/Nuremberg, Germany. Her research interest encompasses the analysis of molecular principles of allosteric GPCR-ligand “communication” and its “translation” into downstream signaling by combining biomolecular and chemical tools to investigate chemokine receptors and their viral homologues. She received different prices, awards and grants, among them the Fellowship of Slovenian Ministry of Science, Fellowship of Slovenian Ministry of Education, Merit Fellowship of University of Central Florida and research grants of German Research Foundation (DFG).

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Paul is currently Head of The Drug Discovery Unit. His current role is to develop translational research at Dundee, by bringing together his and other’s experience of Drug Discovery in the Pharma/Biotech sector with basic academic research to de-risk novel targets for drug discovery and new treatments for diseases such as malaria and cancer. Previously Paul worked within the BioPharma industry for 23 years, gaining experience across a range of therapeutic areas. He played a significant part in seven compounds entering pre-clinical development, two of which are now in Phase II clinical trials. Paul obtained his BSc and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Birmingham. Paul has published around 50 papers and he is an inventor on over 35 patents.

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