Session 5: Innovation and Inspiration from Natural Products
Session Chair
Prof. Thomas MAGAUER
UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK, Innsbruck, Austria
08:30
Capturing Biological Activity in Natural Product Fragments: Success and Limitations (PL14)
Prof. Karl GADEMANN
UNIVERSITY OF ZÜRICH, Zürich, Switzerland
Karl Gademann (1972) was educated at ETH Zürich and Harvard University, where he worked with Prof. Dieter Seebach, Prof. Eric N. Jacobsen, and Prof. Erick M. Carreira. His previous professorial appointments include the EPFL in Lausanne and the University of Basel, where he served as full professor and dean of research. He has been elected to the board of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, and is affiliated to the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering. In Summer 2015, Karl Gademann moved to the University of Zürich, where he serves as the chair of the department of chemistry. In addition, he also performs duties as a research councillor to the Swiss National Science Foundation. His work has been recognized by a number of international awards, including the Latsis prize, the Novartis Early Career Award, the Ruzicka Medal, The Liebig Lecture by the German Chemical Society, and the European Young Investigator Award.
09:00
(De)Construction of Three-Dimensional Molecular Architectures (PL15)
Prof. Thomas MAGAUER
UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK, Innsbruck, Austria
09:30
10:00
Synthesis of Complex Antiplasmodial Isocyanoterpenes (PL16)
Prof. Christopher VANDERWAL
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Irvine, United States
Chris Vanderwal was born in Germany (to Canadian parents). At the age of nearly five, young Chris moved with his parents to Ottawa, Canada, where he attended school, up to and including university (BSc in Biochemistry, MSc in Chemistry from the University of Ottawa). Chris moved to sunny San Diego, where he earned his PhD under the supervision of Erik Sorensen at Scripps in 2003. Chris then moved back to the cold as a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University in the lab of Eric Jacobsen. Chris enthusiastically joined the Chemistry Department faculty at UC Irvine in 2005. In 2011, Chris was promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry with tenure, and was named a UCI Chancellor’s Faculty Fellow. In 2013, Chris was promoted to Professor.
10:30
Total Synthesis of Chivosazole F (OC03)
Dr Simon WILLIAMS
SYNGENTA, Stein AG, Switzerland
Simon Williams did his undergraduate education in natural sciences at the University of Cambridge and continued to do a PhD on the synthesis of marine natural products with Prof. Ian Paterson. He spent a further year as a postdoc in the Paterson group before moving to the University of Zurich to work with Prof. Karl Gademann on antibiotic natural products. At the end of 2018 he started his current position as a team leader in research chemistry at Syngenta in Stein (Switzerland).
11:00
Outdoor Networking Activities
15:45
Networking Break & "Panel Discussion on Protein Degradation"
Panel Discussion on Protein Degradation
Session Chair
Dr Klemens HOEGENAUER
NOVARTIS INSTITUTES FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH, Basel, Switzerland
Prof. Alessio CIULLI
UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE, Dundee, United Kingdom
Prof. Andy PHILLIPS
C4 THERAPEUTICS, Watertown, United States
Andy Phillips is President and Chief Executive Officer of C4 Therapeutics, a biotech company that is developing a new class of small molecules that direct the machinery of the ubiquitin-proteasome system to selectively degrade disease-relevant proteins for therapeutic benefit.
Before joining C4 Therapeutics, Andy was Senior Director, Center for Development of Therapeutics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he led overall therapeutic efforts and provided strategic leadership for a number of major partnerships. Previously, he was a Full Professor of Chemistry at Yale University, where he received the ACS Cope Scholar Award for his research accomplishments, which included the development of small molecules aimed at modulating ‘undruggable’ targets. Prior to this, he was a Full Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where his efforts in complex molecule synthesis and targeting protein-protein interactions garnered a number of awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, an Eli Lilly Grantee Award, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Andy received a B.Sc. (Hons) in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and chemistry from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in organic chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr Christian STEINEBACH
UNIVERSITY OF BONN, Bonn, Germany
Christian Steinebach completed his undergraduate studies in Pharmacy (state examination) at the University of Bonn, Germany. In 2015, he became a licensed Pharmacist and got the Carl-Friedrich-Mohr award. He received his MSc in Drug Development in 2016. Since then he is performing his PhD studies in Pharmaceutical Chemistry supervised by Prof. Michael Gütschow at the Pharmaceutical Institute in Bonn. In 2018, he successfully applied for a PhD-related scholarship from the Bonn International Graduate School of Drug Sciences. His scientific work is devoted to the Medicinal Chemistry of Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras (PROTACs), to the design and synthesis of bioactive molecules acting by a new modality of targeted degradation of disease-causing proteins, in particular protein kinases.
Dr Georg WINTER
RESEARCH CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE OF THE AUSTRIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, Vienna, Austria
Georg Winter, PhD, obtained his degree from the Medical University of Vienna, working on elucidating the mechanism of action of anti-neoplastic drugs under the supervision of Prof. Giulio Superti-Furga. He specialized on proteomics- as well as chemical genetics approaches to identify drug resistance mechanisms and synergistic drug combinations. He continued his training in chemical biology, working as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. James Bradner the Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School. Supported by an EMBO fellowship, he developed the first generalizable pharmacologic solution to in vivo target protein degradation (Winter et al., Science 2015). He was recruited as a CeMM Principal Investigator in June 2016 where his research is now focused on using the unique molecular pharmacology of targeted protein degradation to understand and disrupt fundamental principles of transcription and gene control aberrantly regulated in human cancers. Georg Winter (co-) authored 30 manuscripts including publications in Science, Nature and Nature Chemical Biology. His interdisciplinary research lab is supported by several national and international grants including an ERC Starting grant. Dr. Winter’s contribution to the field of targeted protein degradation was acknowledged via multiple prices and awards, including the Eppendorf Award and the Elisabeth Lutz Award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Session 6: Accelerating Drug Discovery by Intelligence Augmentation
Session Chair
Dr Thomas TRIESELMANN
BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM PHARMA GMBH & CO. KG, Biberach an der Riss, Germany
17:00
Organic Synthesis on a Computer: Should Medicinal Chemists Care? (PL17)
Prof. Bartosz A. GRZYBOWSKI
ULSAN NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, Ulsan, Korea, South
Bartosz A. Grzybowski graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1995 and received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard in 2000. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, he joined the faculty of Northwestern University in 2003 and in 2009 became Kenneth Burgess Professor of Physical Chemistry and Chemical Systems’ Engineering. From 2009 he directed the DoE Non-Equilibrium Research Center at Northwestern. In late 2014 he moved to UNIST where he is now a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and also a Group Leader at the IBS Center for Soft and Living Matter. He is also Professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences. His current research interests include chemical networks and systems, automated synthetic planning, theory of organic synthesis, applications of AI to chemistry, autocatalysis, and “thinking” materials.
17:30
Exploring an Interface of Synthesis and Data Science (PL18)
Prof. Timothy CERNAK
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, United States
Tim Cernak was born in Montreal, Canada in 1980. He obtained a B.Sc. in Chemistry from University of British Columbia Okanagan and there studied the aroma profile of Chardonnay wines. Following PhD training in total synthesis with Prof. Jim Gleason at McGill University, Tim was a FQRNT Postdoctoral Fellow with Tristan Lambert at Columbia University. In 2009, Tim joined the Medicinal Chemistry team at Merck Sharp & Dohme in Rahway, New Jersey. There he developed technologies for miniaturized synthesis and late-stage functionalization. In 2013, Tim moved to Merck’s Boston site. In 2018, Dr. Cernak transitioned from industry to academia and launched a lab at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. The Cernak Lab is exploring an interface of chemical synthesis and data science.
18:00
Accelerating R&D with Augmented Intelligence (PL19)
Dr Matthias ZENTGRAF
BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM, Biberach an der Riss, Germany
Matthias did his PhD with Prof. Klebe and joined the Computational Chemistry group of Boehringer Ingelheim in Biberach in 2006. In 2010 he became team lead of one of the Computational Chemistry teams with a focus on respiratory diseases. Since 2017 he is “Head of Computational Chemistry“.
18:30
Session 7: Targeted Delivery - Strategies to Help your Drug Substances get to the Right Place
Session Chair
Dr Philippe NANTERMET
MERCK & CO. INC (MSD), West Point, United States
19:00
Using Small Molecules to Engineer and Explore Human Immunity (PL20)
Prof. David SPIEGEL
YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, United States
David Spiegel, MD, PhD is a Professor at Yale University with appointments in the departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology. He is also the Chief Scientific Advisor and co-founder of Kleo Pharmaceuticals, and serves as Founding Scientific Advisor to Kymera Therapeutics. The central focus of Professor Spiegel’s research has been the development of novel, small molecule-based strategies for manipulating and regulating human immunity and other biological processes. Over the course of his career, Dr. Spiegel has co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and has obtained over a dozen patents.
19:30
20:30