Confirmed Speakers

Werngard Czechtizky is Head of Medicinal Chemistry for Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity (RIA) at AstraZeneca in Gothenburg, Sweden. She has a track record of delivery of clinical candidates and lead compounds across several therapeutic areas (CV, Diabetes, Pain, CNS, Inflammation and Respiratory). Werngard has continuously implemented state of the art technologies into Medicinal Chemistry. These include e.g. efficient integration of machine learning methods into drug discovery projects, setup of New Modalities Medicinal Chemistry capabilities, implementation of automated synthesis, purification and analytics facilities and efficient integration of compound synthesis with physchem & eADME profiling to accelerate DMTA cycles. Werngard is part of AZ’s Global Chemistry Council, serves on scientific advisory boards of journals and conferences, and is co-/author of ca 80 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 Head of Chemistry at Sanofi Frankfurt, Germany.

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Dr. Nir London completed his PhD in computational structural biology at the Hebrew University in 2012. He then pursued a post-doctroal fellowship with Brian Shoichet at UCSF where he developed a pioneering virtual screening platform for covalent inhibitor discovery. In 2015 Dr. London joined the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he is currently the Alan and Laraine Fischer Career Development Chair in the Dept. of Chemical and Structural Biology. Dr. London’s lab is focused on covalent chemical biology and drug discovery and is developing new technologies to discover and functionalize covalently acting compounds. His honors include amongst others the Chorev award by the Israel Chemical Society, the Alon fellowship, and a BCRF-AACR Career Development Award.

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Dr H. Ratni is an Distinguished Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry, at F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Basel, Switzerland. He successfully, bring from early research to the clinic 6 molecules, one already successfully launched. He received his PhD at the University of Geneva and did a post-doc at Tokyo University before joining F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd in 2001. His research has mainly been devoted to the areas of neuroscience (e.g. V1a receptor antagonist, in human clinical trials, phase 3, for autism). In 2005, he participated in a secondment within the Roche group at Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, Gotemba Japan. He was the chemistry discovery project leader of the SMN program for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy, and inventor of Risdiplam (Evrysdi) approved by FDA in August 2020. His current focus is on gamma secretase modulator for Alzheimer disease. He is an author or co-author of more than 115 patents and publications and received the following awards: - 2014: Roche Leo Sternbach Award for Innovation in Chemistry. - 2016: Gold medal at the Roche Patent Inventor’s recognition event. - 2019: Paper of the year award by the Society of Toxicology (DDTSS) - 2020: Roche CEO Award for Excellence - 2020: Senior Industrial Science Award by the Swiss Chemical Society (SCS)

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Maja Beus successfully defended her PhD thesis in June 2020 in the field of medicinal chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb. Her work was based on designing and synthesizing primaquine derivatives as potential anticancer agents. During her PhD, Maja spent 6 months at McGill University testing a novel HDAC6 inhibitor at the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Additionally, she won the British scholarship Trust scholarship for short-term research (3 months) at the University of Oxford, working on potential kinase inhibitors for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. For her work at Oxford, she was awarded the “Voya Kondic Memorial Prize” given by the British Scholarship Trust for the best use of a study visit. Maja is currently employed as a postdoc at the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health where she’s working on the development of nanoparticles for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

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Dóra Bogdán holds her MSc degree in Pharmacy from Semmelweis University (2013). Her PhD project focused on the structure elucidation of artificial self-assembling systems under a joint academic-industrial supervision of A/Prof. István Mándity (Semmelweis University) and A/Prof. Tamás Gáti (Servier Research Institute). In 2015 she spent a 4-month stay as an Ernst Mach-fellow at the University of Vienna, Division of Drug Synthesis, working on the synthesis of structurally modified natural anticancer compounds in the group of Prof. Norbert Haider. In 2017 Dóra was granted a predoctoral scholarship in the New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities enabling her to perform research on squalenoylated ecdysteroid compounds as anticancer prodrugs. She defended her PhD thesis ‘Structure elucidation of artificial, self-assembling squalene-conjugates and β-peptides’ in 2019. Currently she is an assistant lecturer at Semmelweis University and research fellow in the Artificial Transporters Research Group, Research Centre for Natural Sciences. Her research interests focus on the development, synthesis and NMR characterization of various bioactive small-molecules and peptides.

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Francesco Calzaferri graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University degli Studi di Milano in 2017, after spending his Erasmus Placement at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (Spain) working on the synthesis and photopharmacological characterisation of novel photoswitchable ligands for the α7-nicotinic receptor. In 2021 he obtained his international PhD with honours at the University Autónoma of Madrid within the Marie S. Curie-funded “PurinesDX” programme. His research focused on the discovery and development of a novel P2X7 antagonist for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. Additionally, his short visiting stays at Janssen-Cilag (Spain) and the Ludwig Maximilian University (Germany) allowed him to improve his skills as synthetic chemist and biochemist. Now he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute des Biomolécules Max Mousseron in Montpellier (France), where he works on the optimisation of flavanone derivatives as DNMT inhibitors and the development of novel chemical biology tools for epigenetics research.

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Andrej Emanuel Cotman received a Master of Pharmacy degree (2014) from the University of Ljubljana under the supervision of Danijel Kikelj. He obtained a PhD in organic chemistry (2018), studying ruthenium-catalyzed asymmetric reduction of ketones with Barbara Mohar. After a brief excursus in the field of palladium catalysis in the Janez Košmrlj group, he joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, as a researcher on an IMI-funded antibacterial hit-to-lead project. Currently he is a research associate at the same department, and PI of a basic research project focused on modular asymmetric synthesis of multi-chiral resveratrol oligomers. He is a recipient of two Krka Prizes for Research (one Grand Prize), and of the 2018 Pregl Award for outstanding doctoral work.

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Lluc Farrera-Soler has a Chemistry degree from the University of Barcelona (2014). Financed by an Alfred Werner Scholarship (SCS Foundation), he carried out in 2015 a MSc in Chemical Biology from the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Chemical Biology (a collaboration between the University of Geneva and the EPFL); and he is now finishing his doctoral studies at the University of Geneva, in the laboratory of Prof. Nicolas Winssinger. During his Master, he became interested in drug discovery and his actual research is based on the discovery and application of new methodologies using peptide nucleic acid (PNA) as a robust analogue of DNA and most precisely the applications of PNA-encoded libraries.

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Christos Fotis holds a PhD from the department of Biomedical Systems of the National Technical University of Athens. During his PhD, Christos focused on using deep learning models to systematically model a compound’s mechanism of action in cellular systems. More specifically, Christos has developed graph deep learning models for in-silico systems pharmacology to either identify a compound’s MoA, using its signaling network effect, or to explore on a massive scale the biological effect of newly developed compounds, using their chemical structure. His research interests include the analysis of omics data following compound treatment, using network analysis methods and the development of novel deep learning pipelines for large-scale systems pharmacology approaches. Christos feels that the most important aspect of any developed pipeline is the problem statement, along with the data/features and preprocessing steps, rather than the deep learning method itself. During his research, most of his time is devoted on developing the learning problem that can test the hypothesis, along with finding the right data to train the system. Building a deep learning pipeline based on experimental data, for tasks that cannot be solved by humans is a very complex problem. Given the complexity of the problem, he believes that the collaborative effort of machine learning scientists, medicinal chemists, systems scientists and biologists is paramount for the success of the field.

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Dr. Benedikt Heinrich studied chemistry at the Philipps-University Marburg (Germany) and at Lund University (Sweden). In 2020, he completed his PhD in Chemical Biology at Philipps-University Marburg with Prof. Olalla Vázquez working on Chemical Biology Applications of Photoresponsive DNA-Binding Agents. He is now working as a scientist at Laborarztpraxis Frankfurt. Recently, he was awarded with the PhD award of the GDCh Devision of Medicinal Chemistry.

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Aneta Kaczor is 3rd year PhD student at Faculty of Pharmacy, Jagiellonian University Medical College. She earned her Master of Pharmacy in 2019. Her Master work as well as doctoral research are performed in Department of Technology and Biotechnology of Drugs at Faculty of Pharmacy. Her research is focused on new potential adjuvants of antibacterial and anticancer drugs. In 2017, she obtained „Diamond Grant" project, which enabled her to start PhD studies in 2018, before finishing Master degree. She performed design, synthesis, and SAR analysis of new potential adjuvants. Moreover, she took part in microbiological, ADMETox, and physicochemical assays. She underwent 2 months Erasmus + exchange in Department of Pharmaceutical Science at University of Perugia in 2018.

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Jelena Kesić is a PhD student in Chemistry at Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Environmental protection, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia, working under supervision of assistant professor Dr. Ivana Kovačević. As well as she works as a research assistant in the research group of professor Dr. Velimir Popsavin, a correspondent member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her thesis refers to the synthesis and biological evaluation of a natural product and its analogues and derivatives. Additionally, she is engaged as a teaching assistant on undergraduate courses (Natural product Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Monosaccharides and bioactive derivatives) since 2015. In 2018, she was at research visit at Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Regensburg, Germany. Since December 2020, she is Serbian delegate in European Young Chemists Network. She is a member of the Serbian Young Chemists’ Club and the Serbian Chemical Society.

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Pierre Koch studied chemistry at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and received his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. S. Laufer from the same institution. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked under the direction of Prof. Michael E. Jung at the University of California, Los Angeles (USA) in the Department of Organic Chemistry as well as in the group of Prof. Christa E. Müller at the University of Bonn. In 2013, he was appointed as assistant professor for medicinal chemistry at the University of Tübingen. Since May 2020, he is working as interim chair of the department of Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry II at the University of Regensburg. His research interests are on the design of small molecule kinases inhibitors for the treatment of CNS disorders as well in medicinal chemistry/semi-synthesis of biologically active natural products. Pierre received the Neuroallianz Publication Price (silver) in 2014 and was awarded with the Nachwuchspreis der DPhG-Stiftung (Horst-Böhme-Stiftung) in 2018. Recently, he received the Innovation Award 2021 in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the division Medicinal Chemistry of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) and the division Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry of the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG).

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Romain Marteau obtained his master’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences in 2017 at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain). In 2018, he was selected as a teaching assistant at UCLouvain and started a Ph.D in the laboratory of Pr. Raphaël Frédérick at the Louvain Drug Research Institute. His topic of interest include biochemical and biophysical protein characterization and drug discovery.

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Sarah Memarzadeh obtained a BSc in Molecular Science from the Open University before completing a MSc in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. During her final year project, she designed and synthesised a library of sulfonamide hydroxamic acids as inhibitors for a nematode-specific zinc-endopeptidase. Sarah is currently a final-year PhD student in the France Group at the University of Glasgow and the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, undertaking a multidisciplinary research project investigating targeted small molecule-induced protein degradation as a strategy for the prevention of metastasis.

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Ciro Milite obtained in 2011 the PhD in Medicinal Chemistry with a thesis entitled "Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of new small molecule modulators of arginine methyltransferases." During his training years, he spent a period at the “SCRIPPS Research Institute” at the Barbas Lab. From 2018, he is assistant professor at the Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno. The expertise of Ciro Milite regards most aspects of Drug Discovery, spanning synthetic strategies, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, biophysical techniques. His research has been focused on the development of chemical probes to interrogate epigenetic targets among which he identified modulators of lysine acetylation, lysine methylation and arginine methylation.

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Carlos Moreno Yruela received his Chemistry degree from the University of Zaragoza (Spain) in 2014, and his M.Sc. in Drug Discovery from the University of Surrey (UK) in 2015. After a short scholarship at the Spanish Research Council, he joined the laboratory of Christian A. Olsen at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) to perform his Ph.D. studies on the development of peptide-based chemical tools for the study of epigenetic enzyme function. Carlos completed his Ph.D. in 2019 and has continued his work since as a postdoctoral fellow.

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Dhanushka is a postdoctoral associate in Choudhary lab and joined Broad Institute in 2019. He obtained his PhD working with Prof. Young-Hoon Ahn at Wayne State University on oxidative protein modifications. During his PhD studies he Identified the glutathionylation of the lysine methyl transferase, SMYD2, as a novel molecular mechanism by which reactive oxygen species (ROS) contribute to the etiology of multiple muscle-related diseases, through structural destabilization of myofibrils. He has extensive experience in chemical biology, cell biology, muscle biology, molecular biology and protein biochemistry. Currently he is working on developing bifunctional molecules to induce post-translational modifications of proteins in a proximity driven manner. Also, he develops assays for in vitro and cell-based screening of small molecule libraries to identify inhibitors of CRISPR nucleases. He is a recipient of CBTS Shark Tank II Award (2019) from Broad Institute.

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Natalia Ortiz Zacarías performed her PhD in the field of Medicinal Chemistry, at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR), Leiden University, under the supervision of Prof. Ad IJzerman and Prof. Laura Heitman. During her PhD, she focused on insurmountable antagonists for chemokine receptors. She defended her PhD thesis, entitled “The road to Insurmountability – Novel avenues to better target CC chemokine receptors”, on December 2019. Her dissertation was recently awarded the Dutch 2019-2020 KNCV-Medicinal Chemistry & Chemical Biology (MCCB) best thesis award. Currently she works as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the LACDR and Oncode Institute, and her current work focuses on novel pharmacological concepts to better target chemokine receptors in cancer.

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Clementine Pescheteau obtained in 2018 a Chemistry Engineering degree from Chimie ParisTech (ENSCP, Paris, France) and a Master’s degree in Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology from the University Paris Descartes. She did a four-month internship at University of Glasgow in the medicinal chemistry group of Robert Liskamp, where she worked on an efficient and scalable synthesis of new oligonucleotide monomers. Then she had the opportunity to carry out a six-month internship at Sanofi among the Integrated Drug Discovery team in Chilly-Mazarin. She is currently in 3rd year of PhD at the Organic and Analytical Chemistry Institute (ICOA) in Orléans (France), under the supervision of Pr. Sylvain Routier and Dr. Frederic Buron. Her PhD project, supported by an ANR, is focused on the design and synthesis of selective and dual inhibitors of DYRK1A and CLK1 kinases, involved in neurodegenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease.

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Pedro Pinheiro is a Biological Engineering graduate from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) – University of Lisbon, and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the same institution in 2020. His current work focuses on the development of small molecule agonists for the natural killer cell activation receptors and their application in cancer immunotherapy. He is currently working as a researcher in Centro de Química Estrutural – IST.

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Dr. Bengisu Turgutalp earned Bachelor of Pharmacy degree in 2015. She accepted her PhD in the field of pharmaceutical chemistry from Yeditepe University Institute of Health Sciences in 2020. She served as a teaching and research assistant in Yeditepe University Faculty of Pharmacy within the years of 2015-2020. Currently, she is serving as a full-time assistant professor in the same institution. Since June 2021, as an Erasmus+ scholar, she is conducting her researches in German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Dresden under the supervision of Associate Professor Caghan Kizil.

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Dr. Kaycie Butler is founder of Butler Scientific Communications, helping scientists communicate their work through specialized editing services, workshops, and online courses. Through this work, she has helped over 50 labs across both the US and Europe compose funded research grants and publish hundreds of papers. As a graduate student who struggled with academic writing, a large focus of her work is on ensuring that young scientists build a solid foundation in this area that will support them throughout their career. Her workshops and online courses are designed with these students in mind, breaking down paper and grant writing into clearly identified steps and formulas to reduce stress and time spent writing. Before switching to science communication, Kaycie earned her PhD in chemistry from Caltech (2014) and completed a postdoc in chemical biology at EPFL; she remains based in Switzerland.

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