Confirmed Speakers

Stuart Conway is a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and the E. P. Abraham Cephalosporin Fellow in Organic Chemistry at St Hugh's College, Oxford. He studied Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Warwick before undertaking PhD studies with Professor David Jane and Professor Jeff Watkins FRS at the University of Bristol. Stuart completed post-doctoral studies with Professor Andrew Holmes FRS at the University of Cambridge. In 2003, he was appointed as a Lecturer in Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, in 2008 was appointed as an Associate Professor at Oxford, and in October 2014 he was promoted to Full Professor. Between March and August 2013 Stuart was a Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology. Since 2016 he has been an Associate Editor for the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and he is the President-elect of the RSC Organic Division. His research focuses on the development of chemical tools to study biological systems.

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K. C. Nicolaou is currently the Harry C. Olga K. Wiess Professor of Chemistry at Rice University. He previously served concurrently as the founding chairman of the Chemistry Department at the Scripps Research Institute, a distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego (1989-2013), and the founding Director of the Chemical Synthesis Laboratory at ICES, A*STAR at Biopolis, Singapore. His research activities focus on the discovery and development of new synthetic strategies and technologies, and their applications to the total synthesis of natural and designed molecules of biological and medical importance. He is a co-author of the Classics in Total Synthesis series (I, II, III) and Molecules that Changed the World.

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Cornelia Zumbrunn holds a position as Principal Scientist (medicinal chemist and project leader) in the field of antibacterial research and cardiovascular diseases. Since 2004 she worked in the research department of Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd, now Idorsia Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (Allschwil, Switzerland). Previous positions include Morphochem AG and Hoffmann-LaRoche, after a postdoc at Cambridge University (UK). Cornelia obtained her PhD from Hoffmann-LaRoche and the University of Zürich after having completed studies in organic chemistry in Fribourg (CH) and Neuchâtel (CH). Her research focused on the discovery of antibiotics with novel modes of action and other projects in the areas of central nervous systems and cardiovascular research. She is a board member and the secretary of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology of the Swiss Chemical Society (DMCCB).

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Fabio Begnini (born 11-04-1992) received his Master Degree in Chemistry in 2016, from the University of Milano, Italy. Since the beginning of 2017, Fabio is a PhD student in the Kihlberg group in Uppsala University, Sweden. The main focus of his works is on the development of novel macrocyclic inhibitors of Protein-Protein interactions.

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Maja Beus obtained her master's degree in the field of pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb. During her final year, she won the prestigious Chancellor's award for her work at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry for the synthesis of sorafenib derivatives. Following graduation, she did her internship at the pharmacy and passed the state’s professional exam. She's currently employed at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry (Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb) where she’s started her postgraduate doctoral studies, designing and synthesizing primaquine derivatives as potential anticancer agents under the mentorship of prof. Branka Zorc. During Maja’s Ph.D., she’s spent 6 months at McGill University testing a novel HDAC6 inhibitor at the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics under the mentorship of prof. Dusica Maysinger. Additionally, she won the British scholarship Trust scholarship for short-term research (3 months) at the University of Oxford, under the mentorship of prof. Paul E. Brennan, working on potential kinase inhibitors for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Ghada Bouz graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy at Kuwait University in 2016 with an honor-class bachelor degree in pharmacy. Currently, she is in her third year of PhD study in pharmaceutical chemistry at Faculty of Pharmacy at Charles University in Czech Republic."

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Jorick J. Bruins studied chemistry at the Radboud University Nijmegen and received his MSc degree (Organic Chemistry) in 2013 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Floris Rutjes. Currently, he is pursuing his PhD at Wageningen University & Research under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Floris van Delft and Dr. Bauke Albada. His research interest entail inducible and site-selective modification of proteins for the development of antibody-drug conjugates for application in immuno-oncology

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Andreas Brunschweiger studied Pharmacy at the University of Kiel (Germany), and obtained his PhD in the group of Prof. Christa Müller at the University of Bonn (Germany) in 2007. After conducting postdoctoral research in the same group in a collaboration project with UCB Pharma, he joined Prof. Jonathan Hall's research group at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in 2010. There, he was involved in the design and application of chemical biology tools to study microRNA biology, and the design of short oligonucleotides as microRNA inhibitors. In 2013, he took up his present position as a group leader at the TU Dortmund University. His current research interests include the development of synthesis methodology for DNA-encoded small molecule screening libraries. Focus molecules are heterocyclic, drug-like structures.

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Leonor Côrte-Real has recently obtained her PhD from Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon in the field of Inorganic Chemistry. During her PhD she developed new ruthenium compounds for targeted cancer therapy and her work was acknowledged with a Fulbright grant which she used to study the toxicity of her new prospective ruthenium metallodrugs in a zebrafish model. She is currently a researcher at the same institution and her research interests entail the continuity of this family of compounds by the synthesis and biological evaluation of polymer-metal conjugates as targeted drug-delivery systems for cancer treatment.

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Andrés González Santana is originally from Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain), where he obtained his university degree in Organic Chemistry in 2005 (valedictorian) from Universidad de La Laguna. Next, he moved to Madrid to continue his postgraduate studies at the Universidad Complutense, where he obtained his M.Sc. (Organic & Medicinal Chemistry). In 2007 he joined the group of Prof. Suárez (Institute of Natural Products - CSIC) to carry out PhD studies on the homolytic fragmentation of anomeric radicals and the exploitation of this reaction with synthetic purposes, with an emphasis on the biological applications of the synthesized molecules, which he defended in June 2012. In 2013 he was recruited by Prof. Stephen Withers as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). During the first months of his stay he was able to secure a highly competitive EMBO long-term postdoctoral fellowship. During this period, he worked in parallel projects in the field of glycochemistry, with an emphasis on the discovery of human glucocerebrosidase (GCase) inhibitors to be used as pharmacological chaperones for the treatment of Gaucher disease, in collaboration with the Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) at UBC, as well as with the Child and Family Health Research Institute. In 2016 he moved back to Spain, where he started working at the Institute of Organic Chemistry (IQOG - CSIC, Madrid) under the supervision of Dr Asensio in a dynamic combinatorial approach to study aromatic/carbohydrate interactions and the application in NMR-screening protocols for the discovery and optimization of nucleic acid binders. Andrés has authored more than 20 peer-review articles and has participated in numerous national and international conferences, both as attendant and speaker. Currently, he holds a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship, and as of January next year he will be a Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow.

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Adam Hogendorf defended his PhD thesis entitled ‘Aromatic basic groups in the design and synthesis of serotonin receptor ligands’ under the supervision of prof. Andrzej J. Bojarski at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 2018. Currently, he works as a PostDoc on the design and synthesis of non-classical aminergic GPCR ligands, at the Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Adam is the first author of several publications describing weakly- and non-basic ligands of serotonin receptors and the main author of three patent applications. His posters on the design, synthesis, pharmacology and application of low-basicity 5-HT7R agonists were awarded the main poster prizes at EFMC-ASMC’17 in Vienna and the European School of Medicinal Chemistry in Urbino, 2018. Adam’s scientific interests are focused on the CNS drug area and synthetic organic chemistry.

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Maria Karelou graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where she also received her MSc degree (Medicinal Chemistry) in 2015. Currently she is in her final year of her PhD at the same university under the supervision of Assistant Professor Dr. Ioannis K. Kostakis. Her research focuses on the development of anticancer drugs especially Tyrosyl-DNA-Phosphodiesterase 1 and 2 inhibitors. She has participated in many international conferences and during this year she had a selected oral communication of her work at 26th Young Research Fellows Meeting, Paris.

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Damijan Knez finished Master’s Degree in Pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, where he also obtained a Ph.D. in 2017 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Stanislav Gobec. He is an assistant and researcher in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana since 2017. His research interests are structure-based design, synthesis and evaluation of small-molecule enzyme inhibitors focused primarily on neurodegenerative diseases. He is a co-author of 25 papers and two granted international patents, a recipient of the 2018 Faculty of Pharmacy award for high-impact publication, and the winner of 2017 Krka prize.

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Alberto Massarotti received his master degree in Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (2006) and his Doctorate degree (2009) from the University of Piemonte Orientale (Novara, Italy). He is currently Assistant professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the same university. His field of interest covers the development and application of novel computational methodologies to discover new lead compounds. His main scientific activities are about the design of bioactive compounds of medicinal relevance, especially in the realm of cancer treatment. Recently, his research is focused on the development of small peptide-like compounds as novel therapeutic agent in the treatment of cystic fibrosis.

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Chloé Maucort received her engineering degree in 2017 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes (ENSCR, Rennes, France) together with a master degree in Molecular Chemistry from the University of Rennes. After two internships in Toronto and in Auckland (respectively 4 and 6 months), she carried out two six-month internships on the synthesis of cholesterol derivatives’s bioactive molecule in Affichem SA (Toulouse, France) and on the synthesis of new pyridazine-dione linker for antibody drug conjugate at the Institute of Research Servier (Croissy, France). She is currently a PhD student in the Institute of Chemistry of Nice (ICN, Nice, France) at the University Cote d’Azur under the supervision of Dr Maria Duca and in collaboration with the Institute of Research Servier. Her current research focuses on the synthesis of small molecules interfering with oncogenic mircroRNAs in order to induce glioblastoma stem cells differentiation and propose a treatment for this incurable cancer.

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Michal Shoshan graduated in chemistry and biology at Tel-Aviv University (Israel) in 2008 and conducted her Ph.D. studies under the supervision of Prof. Edit Tshuva at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), working on the design of peptidic models for copper metallochaperones, both for mechanistic investigation and as drug candidates for Wilson’s disease. After graduating in late 2015, she spent three years at ETH Zurich, where she worked as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Helma Wennemers on the development of peptide-coated platinum nanoparticles as antitumor agents. At the beginning of 2019, Michal started her own research group at the department of chemistry of the University of Zurich, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, where she works on the development of new candidates for chelation therapy and environmental remediation.

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Marta Spasić is a Master’s student at the Faculty of Chemistry in Belgrade, Serbia, where she has received the BSc degree in Chemistry. Marta is also working on her magisterial thesis for the degree of Magister of Pharmacy at the Faculty of Medicine in Niš, Serbia. With a strong background in the fields of pharmacy and medicine, Ms Spasić strives to obtain deeper insight into both organic synthesis and biomedical sciences. Currently, she is working on the development of the novel inhibitors of bacterial communication pathways as a part of her MSc thesis. In 2018, she took part in the Summer Fellowship Programme at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia, studying carbon-hydrogen bonds functionalization. In 2017, during the Summer Science Programme at ITQB NOVA in Oeiras, Portugal, she was performing the synthesis of bacterial signalling molecule. For the presentation of her BSc thesis at 6th Conference of the Young Chemists of Serbia Marta Spasić received EYCN Best Oral Presentation Award.

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Noam Steinman received his BSc (Chemistry) from Brandeis University in 2015 and his MSc (Chemistry) from Bar Ilan University in 2017. He is currently pursuing his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Prof. Abraham Domb. His research interests entail development of hydrophilic polymers for medicinal applications. His specific focus is on the incorporation of stable cationic moieties into polymeric structures to be used as antimicrobials and transfection agents.

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Gábor Veres graduated at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Szeged (Hungary) in 2012 and started his work as a research assistant at the Department of Neurology – Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged under the supervision of Dr. Dénes Zádori, where he works to this day. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2017 at the Doctoral School of Clinical Medicine („HPLC method optimization for the preclinical and clinical assessment of neurological disorders”). His research interests are HPLC method development for small molecules focusing on neurotransmitters and neuromodulators and using these methods in the investigation of preclinical animal models of neurodegeneration and and in clinical studies of neurological diseases.

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Raoul Walther received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg, Germany, and subsequently commenced his graduate studies under the supervision of Prof. Alexander N. Zelikin at the Department of Chemistry at Aarhus University, Denmark. In spring 2019, Raoul defended successfully his Ph.D., where he focused on the design of glucuronide prodrugs for site-selective delivery. Currently he investigates glycoproteins and glycoconjugates as tool to improve the pharmacokinetics of biological drugs. His research interests include the broader field of medicinal chemistry, prodrug design, and more recently the field of antibiotic discovery.

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I obtained my undergraduate degree, MChem Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology in 2015 at the University of Liverpool. Started my PhD 2015, with focus on novel treatments for C. neoformans in Dr Gemma Nixon’s Group and co-supervised by Dr Neil Berry.

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