MEDCHEMMEET2023

Elias Fattal is a full professor in Drug Delivery Science at the University of Paris-Saclay in Châtenay-Malabry, France, and president of APGI from 2003 to 2010. He received his Pharmacy Degree (1983) and Ph.D. (1990) from the University of Paris-Sud and followed an internship in Hospital Pharmacy at the University of Lille (1984-1986). After visiting the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, for a post-doctoral position (1990-1991), he became an Associate Professor (1992) and full Professor at the University of Paris-Saclay (2000). He has been the head of the InstitutGalien Paris-Saclay (2010-2019). Over the past 30 years, he has made fundamental and applied contributions to the fields of drug delivery using nanotechnologies for targeted or local delivery of drugs and nucleic acids. He has been recently focusing on lung nanotoxicity and the design of nanoparticle-based delivery systems for the delivery of anti-inflammatory drugs and nucleic acids. One of his patents led to Calixarene® Cevidra, a cream for treating external actinide contamination. He has contributed to around 300 publications and book chapters. Prof. Fattal has received the Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress (PSWC) Research Achievement (2007), the Controlled Release Society fellow award (2016), was awarded in 2016 by the French Academy of Sciences for his research at the interface of chemistry and biology and more recently in 2018 received the Maurice-Marie Janot Award. He serves on the editorial board of several scientific journals and is a member of the National Academy of Pharmacy, the National Academy of Medicine, and the European Academy of Sciences.

Craig W. Lindsley, Ph.D. is the Director of the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery (WCNDD), a clinical stage biotech, nestled within the University. Craig is also University Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, Chemistry & Biochemistry and holds the William K. Warren Jr. Chair in Medicine.Together with Jeff Conn, Craig has pioneered the concept of GPCR allosteric modulation, developing key proof of concept compounds and clinical candidates. Craig holds over 120 issued US patents and has published over 575 manuscripts and another 225 published patent applications.Of the publications, there are numerous which detail the first-in-class tools and POC for M1 PAMs, mGlu5 PAMs, mGlu4 PAMs, M5 NAMs, M4 antagonists, PLD, multiple ion channels and transporters, as well as the first allosteric Akt kinase inhibitors (and over 20 clinical candidates). As co-founder and Director of the WCNDD, Craig has raised over $390 million in licensing and research support from NIH, Foundations and companies in the past 16 years. In 2016, and without an industry partner, Craig oversaw IND-enabling studies of a novel M1 PAM that was awarded an open IND, and the Phase I trial (SAD) was completed at Vanderbilt prior to licensing to Acadia. In 2018, he was a founder of Appello Pharmaceuticals, and in 2021, saw his mGlu4 PAM entered Phase I clinical trials. Beyond this, Craig is the founding Editor-in-Chief of ACS Chemical Neuroscience (2009-2020), interim Editor-in-Chief of ACS Pharmacology & Translational Scinence (2020-2021) and current Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. He has been the recipient of major awards from ACS and ASPET, including induction into the ACS MEDI Hall of Fame, and named a Fellow of the American Society of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics, the Royal Society for Chemistry, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Vladimir P. Torchilin, Ph.D., D.Sc. is a University Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Director, Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine, Northeastern University, Boston. His interests include drug delivery and targeting, nanomedicine, multifunctional and stimuli-sensitive pharmaceutical nanocarriers, liposomes, micelles, biomedical polymers, experimental cancer therapy. He has published more than 450 original papers, more than 200 reviews and book chapters, wrote and edited 13 books, and holds more than 40 patents. Google Scholar shows more than 80,000 citations of his papers with H-index of 126. He is Editor-in-Chief of Current Drug Discovery Technologies, and Drug Delivery, Co-Editor of Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and on the Editorial Boards of many other journals. He received more than $20 M from the governmental and industrial sources in research funding. He has multiple honors and awards and in 2011, Times Higher Education ranked him number 2 among top world scientists in pharmacology for the period of 2000-2010. In 2021 Elsevier/Stanford analysis ranked him as a single highest-cited researcher among more than 130,000 ranked researches and the area of Pharmacology/Pharmacy.

Dr. Matin has been a full professor in Stanford Medical School for several years and is affiliated with several programs, including the Stanford Cancer Research Institute; he elected to become emeritus, July 1, ‘21. His research contributions are numerous, including discovery of new drugs, therapeutic enzymes, and their improvement as well as their specific targeting to cancer (and other diseases). He did his Ph. D. at UCLA, spent some years in the Netherlands (State University of Groningen), where he directed a research group, before joining Stanford. He is recipient of numerous awards and honors.

Julien Nicolas received his PhD degree in 2005 from the University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris, France), where he studied nitroxide-mediated polymerization and emulsion polymerization. After a postdoctoral position at the University of Warwick (Coventry, UK) on polymer-protein bioconjugates, he obtained in 2007 a permanent CNRS researcher position at Institut Galien Paris-Saclay (Châtenay-Malabry, France) and got promoted Director of Research at CNRS in 2016 and group leader in 2019. His current research activities lie in advanced macromolecular synthesis and in the design of innovative polymer-based nanomedicines, in particular polymer nanoparticles and polymer prodrug nanocarriers for anticancer therapy. He is (co)author of more than 110 peer review articles in international journals, 7 patents and 13 book chapters. He serves as Associate Editor for Chemistry of Materials (ACS) and is part of the Editorial Advisory Board of ACS Macro Letters (ACS), Macromolecules (ACS) and Polymer Chemistry (RSC). He received the 2016 SCF/GFP award, the 2017 Polymer Chemistry Lectureship award, the 2017 Novacap Prize of the Academy of Science and the 2018 Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules Young Investigator Award.

Professor Lewis started his PhD research on polyether sodium channel activator toxins known as ciguatoxins, which are responsible for ciguatera fish poisoning. He then spent 10 years researching the problem at the Queensland Department of Primary Industries before moving back to The University of Queensland in 1995 to initiate research into the phamacology of conotoxins, small venom peptides produced by cone snails. This research led to the development of Xen2174 as a new class of non-competitive norepinephrine transporter inhibitors for the treatment of severe pain at Xenome Ltd, a company he co-founded. Professor Lewis’ current research interests include the origins and detection of ciguatoxins and the elucidation of the evolution and pharmacology of conopeptides, especially the discovery of novel classes of peptides that may be useful for the treatment of pain. Presently he is Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and was inaugural Director of the IMB Centre for Pain Research in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at The University of Queensland, Australia.

Dr. H. Hosseinkhani, Chemical Engineer, has broad experience in life sciences and is an expert in nanotechnology, biomaterials, drug delivery, 3D in vitro systems, bioreactor technology, and bioengineering stem cells technology. His working experience is mainly attributed to academia and industry of biomedical engineering research and development (which includes several years of basic science research experience in a number of premier institutions related to the structure and function of biomaterials, and in polymer-based and mineral-based medical implants development in the medical device industry). He has been awarded several prestigious fellowships including JSPS Fellowship of Japan,and European Marie Curie Fellowship. He authored more than 100 scientific papers published on peer-reviewed Journals, 5 books, and 10 book chapters (H-index: 46Google Scholar). He is inventor of 16 National and International patents, several of which are licensed to companies acting in the biomedical fields and translated to 7 commercial products. He is the founder of Matrix, Inc., a world leading Biotech Company dedicated to healthcare technology to improve patient's quality of life.He is Editor-in-Chief; Recent Progress in Materials, Editor-in-Chief; Journal of Modern Nanotechnology, and Country Editor; Current Drug Delivery.

Dr. Mark T. Hamann servesas the Charles and Carol Cooper/SmartState Endowed Chair of Drug Discovery, Biomedical Sciences and Public Health at the MUSC Colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine and also holds Adjunct appointments with The University of Maryland’s Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology.Dr. Hamann began his career in cGMP pharmaceutical manufacturing at Solvay Pharmaceuticals in Baudette, Minnesota andthen completed a Ph.D. degree in OrganicChemistry at the University of Hawaii,under the guidance of the late Professor Paul J. Scheuer. During his graduate studies he discovered the lead anticancer agent, kahalalide F which entered clinical trials with the leadership of the biotech company PharmaMar. Dr. Hamann completed Postdoctoral Studies with Prof Bill Baker at McMurdo Station in Antarctica and then spent 20 years as a faculty member and natural products researcher at The University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy. During his research career, Dr. Hamann has published over 250 scientific papers, reviews, book chapters and guided over 100 graduate students/postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars. Dr. Hamann served as an Associate Editor for BiochimicaetBiophysicaActa, General Subjects where he reviewed and edited publications focused on natural product based therapeutics and new methodologies. His group is actively involved in the isolation, structure determination and optimization through synthesis of natural products and therapeutics with a focus on plant and invertebrate microbiomes. His group is currently working on the preclinical development of a small pipeline of natural products with activity against cancer, emerging infectious diseases and neuropsychiatric disorders. He is committed to the success of Sycamore BioPharma and the strategic replacement of petroleum based fine chemicals with renewables generated through local and regional agriculture and the type of manufacturing available at the facilities at Sycamore BioPharma. This approach to economic development supports both the local economy as well as the reduction of the countries carbon footprint.

Dr. Hurley’s present research interests are in the areas of design and development of antitumor agents. Over the last forty years, work from his laboratory has led to elucidation of the structures of the drug–nucleic acid complexes for seven different groups of compounds that are potentially useful in the treatment of cancer. In cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry, several drugs developed with the aid of these studies have been evaluated in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials. Most recently his research has centered on secondary DNA structures, particularly G-quadruplexes and C-quadruplexes (also called i-motifs), as gene targets for drug design. While he was CSO of Cylene Pharmaceuticals a first-in-class G-quadruplex-interactive compounds Quarfloxin and CX5461, developed from this technology and licensed from the University of Arizona, were advanced into phase 1 and 2 clinical trials in 2007 and 2020. The latter has received FDA Fast Track Designation for Breast and ovarian cancer in BRCA1/2 mutant cancers. He has published 278 papers and has an H-Index of 93. Dr. Hurley has been a consultant to a number of pharmaceutical companies and was a Senior Editor for Journal of Medicinal Chemistry from 1992 to 2010, Chair of the MEDI Division of the ACS in 2010, Chair of the Chemistry in Cancer Research in 2009, and Chair of the NCI Board of Scientific Councilors in 2010. He is a recipient of the 1988 George Hitchings Award in Innovative Methods in Drug Design and the 1989 Volwiler Research Achievement Award from the American Association of College of Pharmacy. He received the 1992 APhA Research Achievement Award in Medicinal Chemistry and the 1994 American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Award. He was awarded D.Sc. degrees from Bath University (1996) and Purdue University (2013). In 2005 he was awarded the George & Christine Sosnovsky Award in Cancer Therapy by the Royal Society of Chemistry, and in 2007 he was inducted into the American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame and named Innovator of the Year by the University of Arizona. He was presented with the 2008 AACP Paul Dawson Biotechnology Award and the 2011 Nucleic Acids Award from the Royal Society for Chemistry; and in 2017 he was named Arizona Biosciences Researcher of the Year and in 2018 Innovator of the Year—Academia: Arizona Technology Council’s Governor’s Celebration of Innovation. In 2020 he was Elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He was the first to demonstrate drug targeting of promoter G-quadruplexes in 2002 and then C-quadruplexes in 2014. Most recently his research program has focused on DNA damage and repair by G-quadruplex interactive compounds and transcriptional targeting of important oncogenes, including hTERT, c-MYC, KRAS, BCL2, n-MYC, PDGFR-β, and hTERT. He is currently CSO of Reglagene, a company with a platform technology to target G-Quadruplexes.

Quentin Perron is a medicinal chemist by training. He holds a PhD in organometallic chemistry from the University of Geneva. During his post-doc fellowship at UCLA he worked on the total synthesis of Brasillicardin A, a complex natural molecule known for having a potent immunosuppressive activity. After working as a medicinal chemist in CNS indications at Laboratoires Servier, he switched to data science and chemoinformatics at Quinten, a company specialized in data science services. In 2016, with his business partners Yann Gaston-Mathé and Nicolas Do Huu, he co-founded Iktos, a start-up company developing AI technologies for new drug design. He is now the CSO of the company.

Hitendra M. Patel, PhD is the Professor of the Department of Chemistry at Sardar Patel University, Vallabh Vidyanagar-388120, Gujarat State, India. He is an Editor of Material Science Research India (2021-2022), Associate Editor in the Organic Section of Frontiers in Chemistry Journal, Switzerland (from 2021) and Editorial board member in many international high-repute journals.He was an Elected Member of the Organic Division Council, Royal Society of Chemistry (2020-2023) and was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London in 2020. His research interests include the Development of Bioactive Heterocyclic Scaffolds via Multi-component reactions, with a focus on Green Chemistry approaches and Medicinal Chemistry, including the synthesis of small molecules, virtual and biomolecular screening.He has published more than 40 manuscripts, Reviews including Books. He was selected as the Brand ambassador of Bentham Science Publisher for the Year 2018-2019. He received International Travel Support from DST-SERB, New Delhi. He had given many invited talks at the National and International levelsat Conferences and Universities. He has received the Outstanding Contribution Award for reviewing the Journal of Molecular Structure and also received Distinguished Faculty in Science Award 2017 from Venus International Foundation, Chennai, India. He worked as an Expert reviewer in many International Journals and received the Top 1% Peer Reviewer Award 2018-2019 in Chemistry from Publons.

Biography: Prof. Yoko Matsumoto is a Professor of Department of Life Sciences at Sojo University, Japan. She received her PhD in Pharmacy from Kyushu University, Japan.She was a visiting researcher in Colorado University at Boulder with Prof. Tom Cech, USA. Yoko Matsumoto has received Outstanding Female Researcher Award from the Society of Chemical Engineering, Japan. She is one of Director for Japan Nanomedicine Society and Councilor for Japanese Association for Molecular Target Therapy of Cancer. Her current research interest focuses on liposomes for therapy against cancer. She has published more than 140original papers.

Carrie K. Jones is a highly trained behavioral and systems neuroscientist and neuropharmacologist, who has expertise in the use of neurochemical, behavioral and imaging methodologies to study the in vivo effects of metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) and muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (mAChR) ligands in the regulation of brain function and behavior, and in development of novel approaches to the treatment of CNS disorders. She has been involved in small molecule discovery both in industry and academia for more than two decades. As an in vivo pharmacologist at Eli Lilly and Company, I was a key contributor on several scientific teams focused on the development of novel therapeutics for schizophrenia and chronic pain. Her efforts contributed to four clinical candidates, including the M1/M4 preferring muscarinic receptor agonist xanomenline for schizophrenia, the balanced serotonergic and noradrenergic reuptake inhibitor duloxetine, the mixed AMPA/kaniate receptor antagonist LY293558, and an iGluR5 antagonist for chronic pain. Her characterization of duloxetine in several preclinical models of inflammatory and persistent pain directly contributed to the ongoing drug discovery effort for this molecule that culminated with the approval of Cymbalta® (duloxetine HCl) for the treatment of chronic pain and depression associated with painful diabetic neuropathy and fibromyalgia. Dr. Jones is currently Director of In Vivo Pharmacology and Development for the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery and Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. Her group provides the in vivo characterization of novel mGluR and mAChR subtype-specific ligands for the ongoing development of novel hit and lead molecules as well as preclinical efficacy for potential clinical candidates for psychiatric and neurologic disorders; several preclinical drug candidates have advanced from these efforts to clinical collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, including Acadia, Neumora, Prothena,Boehringer Ingelheim, Johnson and Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb, and others. More recently, Dr. Jones has coordinated the successful bench to bedside translation of the clinical drug candidate M1 PAM VU319 from IND-enabling studies through a Phase I SAD clinical trial at VUMC for the treatment of cognitive impairments in AD. Dr. Jones is also a section editor for the Neuropharmacology journal. To date, she has published over 140 peer-reviewed articles and served as mentor and/or co-mentor to over 80 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduates that have advanced to top medical and graduate training programs and faculty and senior scientist positions in both academia and industry.

Francis Johnson received his BSc (1951) and his PhD(1954) from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. He then obtained a Post-Doctoral Fellowship (1954-1957) at Boston University in Massachusetts studying under the guidance of Dr. Walter Gensler. Thereafter he joined the Eastern Research Laboratory (Wayland, MA) of the Dow Chemical Company, an industrial research institute where he remained until 1973, when he was invited to participate as Vice Chairman, in the founding of anew Departmentof Pharmacological Sciences at Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, N.Y. He was appointedas Professor of Pharmacological Sciences and Professor of Chemistry. He is currently a member of the Institute for Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery at Stony Brook University. He was a Visiting Scientist at Oxford University (1967-1968) and was a Visiting Professor at Brandeis University (1979) and at Glasgow University (1986). He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine given his contributions to the fields of Chemistry and the Medical Sciences. Dr. Johnson’s academic research interests include the total synthesis of natural products, new synthetic methods and strategies, heterocyclic chemistry. stereochemistry and chemical biology. He is the author of the concept of Allylic Strain (the fourth leg of stereochemical theory) which resolved most of the so-called anomalous behaviors of unsaturated organic compounds. His review paper on this topic, is one of the most quoted papers in the history of Organic Chemistry. Principal interests over the past twenty years have been in the area of DNA damage, maihly the synthesis of DNA oligomers containing environmentally-induced carcinogenic lesions. He was the first to devise practical synthetic methods for the site-specific introduction into DNA, of the damage caused by such chemical carcinogens as aminobiphenyl,benzo[a]pyrene, acraldehyde, and the oxidative damages known as 8-0xo-dG, FaPy-dG and FaPy-dA. Recently his research has focused on two areas (a) the chemical biology of Endemic Nephropathy a disease prevalent throughout the Balkans and China, involving the highly nephrotoxic and carcinogenic Aristolochic Acids and (b) the development of a new series of drug substances that temper diseases associated with collagen loss.The latter program has generated a lead compound which has now been licensed to a veterinary company, to treat periodontitis and likely osteo-arthritis, in companion animals.

Prof. Elka Touitou is the Head of Dermal, Transdermal, Transmucosal Delivery Lab at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is an internationally recognized authority in the field of drug delivery and design of novel and advanced technologies for delivery of cannabinoids and for drug dermal/transdermal and nasal delivery research. She has served in the Board of Directors of Controlled Release Society (CRS) and as President of the ICRS (Israeli Controlled Release Society). She has more than 100 scientific original research papers, reviews, books editorial and chapters. Prof. Touitou received numerous awards including the Kaye Innovation Award 2006 and 2020, as one of the leader innovators at the Hebrew University. She is the inventor of more than 50 granted international patents. She is in the Scientific Advisory Board of several startups and dermal and cosmetic companies.

Dr. Kontoyianni is a Professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, School of Pharmacy. She holds a PhD in computational chemistry from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she worked under the supervision of Professor Phil Bowen. After a post-doctoral fellowship with Professor Terry Lybrand at the University of Washington, she joined ZymoGenetics, where she used computational methods in support of osteoporosis. She then moved to Research & Development of Fortune 500 companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble, applying structure-based design to various therapeutic targets ranging from hit to lead optimization. In her most recent post and prior to joining academia, she was the Head of Drug Discovery at Crystax, a fragment-based biotechnology firm in Barcelona. She sits on the editorial board of several journals, holds eight patents, is a clinical consultant, panelist for the European Commission large scale grant application proposals, and NIHad hoc reviewer for Small Business and Technology Transfer in Drug Discovery and Development.

Bruce is a Research Assistant Professor of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine and a Senior Director of Medicinal Chemistry in the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery @ Vanderbilt University. Bruce has served as Editor in Chief of ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies (a Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. journal) since 2017. His areas of expertise include medicinal chemistry, chemical methodology development, natural product synthesis, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization. The theme of his research in the areas of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery has been the development of small molecules which target G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) with high levels of specificity, affinity and potency for the GPCR of interest. Bruce received his B.S. in Chemistry from Louisiana State University with Professor Robert M. Strongin while working on the synthesis of resorcinarene chromophores as sensors for mono- and oligosaccharides. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame under the direction of Professor Richard E. Taylor. He developed novel cationic cyclopropanation reactions with high enantiospecificity from enantiomerically enriched sulfonate intermediates. He also investigated biomimetic approaches to cyclopropanes found in polyketide natural products. After successful completion of his Ph.D., he moved to Vanderbilt University to begin postdoctoral studies under Professor Gary A. Sulikowski. He was awarded an NIH fellowship through the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology to develop novel small molecule inhibitors of the Wnt signaling pathway as it relates to colorectal cancer. Additionally, he synthesized new apoptolidin-rhodamine conjugates to elucidate the biological target of apoptolidin A. In 2010, Bruce moved to the WCNDD as a drug discovery scientist and worked on the development of novel small molecule PAMs of the M1 and M4 muscarinic receptors for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. In 2015, Bruce accepted a position as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Director of the Chemical Synthesis and Drug Discovery Facility at the University of Notre Dame. While at UND, he also served as Notre Dame Research Navigator for the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, an NIH NCATS CTSA awarded to the Indiana University School of Medicine (ICTSI NIH/NCRR Grant Number UL1TR001108). In 2019, Bruce returned to the WCNDD as a Research Assistant Professor and Project Leader for a collaboration with Boehringer-Ingelheim to develop novel small molecule PAMs of mGluR1 and mGluR3 as treatments for schizophrenia.

Dr. Boutaud got his Ph.D. in molecular pharmacology from the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France. After a post-doctoral position at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, USA, he joined the Faculty in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at Vanderbilt. There, he spent 20 years studying the pharmacology of NSAIDs. During this time, he discovered a new platelet phenotype associated with high reactivity and led a clinical study to assess this phenotype as a possible marker for high risk for heart attack. He was also associated with several clinical studies investigating the effects of paracetamol, aspirin and resveratrol in neurological and cardiovascular disorders. Another interest of Dr. Boutaud is the involvement of reactive dicarbonyls in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. This work culminated with Dr. Boutaud leading a phase 1 clinical study investigating the safety of a natural scavengers of reactive dicarbonyl in humans. In 2020, Dr. Boutaud moved to the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery at Vanderbilt University, where he co-directs the laboratory of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics.

I gained PhD and MPhil in pharmacy and biomedical sciences from Strathclyde University, Glasgow, UK and Medicinal chemistry was the main focus of a different project I worked on, where I developed and synthesised inhibitors of enzymes that were determined to be targeted in various diseases using structure-based molecular modelling. Dipeptidyl peptidase IV, a target for type II diabetes, was the enzyme for my MPhil, and sphingosine kinases, targets for prostate cancer, were the enzymes for my Doctorate. With the use of docking software and the profiling of structure-activity connections based on these investigations, I have developed my experience and expertise in molecular modelling of protein-small molecule interactions. I have grown into a skilled synthetic medicinal chemist after successfully synthesising, purifying, and characterising 150 molecules directed against these enzymes. I also created the main assay for determining the biochemical activity of all the substances I synthesised, which gave me a solid foundation in biochemistry and enzyme kinetics. As a medicinal chemist, I also had to evaluate in vitro ADME data to help direct compound optimization, which has given me a better understanding of the physicochemical and pharmacokinetic features in the context of drug development. Finally, I carried out a variety of cell-based experiments, including pharmacodynamic and phenotypic evaluations of drug-target engagement, to determine compound activity in pertinent cell lines.

Michaela Serpi is currently Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry at Cardiff University. Her research interests encompass different areas of drug discovery such as oncology, antibiotic resistanceand rare diseases.She has expertise in drug discovery, spanning from compound design and synthesis, lead optimization and candidate selection to preclinical and clinical evaluation.She has a strong track record of publication in peer-reviewed journals, and she is named inventor on several worldwide patents.She graduated in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1998 from the University of Cagliari(IT) and received her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry in 2005 from the University of Perugia (IT). She has several years of post-doctoral studies in centers of excellence for research at European and USA universities. She has worked at the University of Southern California (LA, USA) as post-doctoral Fellow at the development of new and improved medical tools against potential bioterrorism agents. This project was funded by a NIH grant and featured close collaboration with TSRL Inc (Therapeutic Systems Research Laboratories), a privately-owned preclinical accelerator company. She worked asResearch Fellowat CardiffUniversity, where she was the PIof a translational oncology project sponsored by NuCana plc, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. This programme has been very successful with three drugs, developed at Cardiff, reaching the clinical stage.

Maryam received her pharm-D's degree from Zanjan University of Medical Sciences in Iran in 2018. Her thesis focused on “preparation and characterization of curcumin loaded gold/graphene oxide nanocomposite for potential breast cancer therapy”. This work was published in "Research on Chemical Intermediates" journal in Sep’2018. Maryam has been working in pharmacy since 2019. Additionally, she’s been managing Cosmetic and Beauty Skin Clinic in Zanjan since 2022. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, photography, fitness training and playing guitar. She also love traveling and exploring new places!

Dr. Koji Matsuoka is a Professor of Material Science, Graduate School of Science & Engineering, Saitama University (SU), Saitama, Japan. He received a Bachelor degree from SeikeiUniversity in 1990 and a Ph.D. from Hokkaido University (with Prof. S.-I. Nishimura) in 1995. He did his postdoctoral research at RIKEN, Saitama, Japan. He joined Department of Functional Materials Science, Faculty of Engineering, Saitama University in 1995 as an assistant professor, and was promoted an associate professor in 2001 and professor in 2011. He has published more than 100 research articles and book chapters in bioorganic chemistry and medicinal chemistry field.

Dongmin Liu has completed his Ph.D. at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and postdoctoral studies in the University of Iowa Medical College. He is presently a professor and the director of Molecular Nutrition Laboratory in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise at Virginia Tech. Dr. Liu’s research is primarily focused on identifying and characterizing naturally occurring small molecules for prevention and treatment of obesity, diabetes, and vascular disease, as well as promoting healthy aging. Specifically, his lab has discovered several botanical small molecules for preventing diabetes or its vascular complications. In addition, he for the first time discovered a human steroid DHEA membrane receptor. He has published more than 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Liu has served on various grant review panels such as National Institutes of Health and American Diabetes Association, and is also serving as an editorial board member for several scientific journals such as American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology & Metabolism, Nutraceuticals and as associate editor for the journal Frontier in Nutrition.

Aaron earned his PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of Michigan in 2016, working under the direction of Dr. Henry Mosberg. He then joined the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery at Vanderbilt University as a postdoc, working with Craig Lindsley. Upon completion of his postdoctoral training, Aaron remained at Vanderbilt and is currently an Assistant Director of Medicinal Chemistry. Aaron’s research interests are in medicinal chemistry, particularly the development of therapeutics targeting G protein-coupled receptors, and organic synthesis.

My career in Chemistry began in 2005 with the beginning of my bachelor’s in science coursework and research in Biochemistry at the Pokhara University, Kathmandu. I thereafter decided to move to Norwegian University of Life Science in 2010 to continue my professional development in Environmental Chemistry (MS in Radioecology). I then moved to Utah State University in 2016 for another master’s degree in Chemistry focusing on Organic Chemistry. I have been associated with various aspects of antifungal, antibacterial, anticancer, antiviral, and antiinfluenzadrug discoveries during my career.Having completed my MS program from Utah State, I joined Inimmune Corporation tocarry out research in adjuvant and vaccine discovery. At present, I am working as a Research Scientist with a focus on the design and synthesis of drugs from early discovery to the clinical trials.

Jina Ko is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Bio engineering at University of Pennsylvania. She focuses on developing single molecule detection from single extracellular vesicles (EV) and multiplexed molecular profiling to better diagnose diseases and monitor treatment efficacy. Jina graduated from Rice University with a B.S. in Bioengineering and a B.A. in French Studies in 2013 and she earned her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. During her Ph.D., she developed machine learning-based microchip diagnostics that can detect blood-based biomarkers to diagnose pancreatic cancer and traumatic brain injury. For her postdoctoral training, she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University as a Schmidt Science Fellow and a NIH K99/R00 award recipient. Jina developed new methods to profile single cells and single EV with high throughput and multiplexing.

Dr. Weber has studied chemistry and pharmacy in Budapest, Hungary, and received its PhD and habilitation from the University of Leipzig, Germany. He has over 24 years of industrial research experience in pharmaceutical chemistry, chemoinformatics, drug discovery and development. Dr. Weber is a university lecturer, has held various scientific and managerial positions at Hoffman-La Roche in Basel Switzerland. Dr. Weber has been co-founder of biotech startups Morphochem AG, Alphaptose GmbH, OntoChem GmbH and MolGenie GmbH in Germany as well as NexusPharma Inc. in the U.S.A. He has been a recipient of two European Union research grants and several German government research grants. Dr. Weber is the author of over 100 scientific papers, book chapters and reviews. Dr. Weber’s experience includes the direction of several early drug discovery projects that led to the identification of new small molecules as drug candidates and moving four projects into clinical development.

Christiane Contino-Pépin is currently an assistant professor of organic and medicinal chemistry at Avignon University, France. She received her PhD degree from the University of Avignon in 1997 and a habilitation degree to supervise research from the latter university in 2009.Her main research interest is the synthesis of fluorinated surfactants usable for the design of amphiphilic carriers and formulations for targeted drug delivery. She also has a good expertise on extraction and formulation of natural products. Since 2012 she is actively involved in several research projects dealing with the development of stabilized perfluorocarbon droplets for ultrasound imaging and drug delivery. Recently, her research activity is also dedicated to the design of innovative formulations for green chemistry applications (extraction/formulation of natural products, extraction/formulation of precious metals from electronic waste). Team-leader of the “Amphiphilic Systems and Eco-compatible Formulations” group (SAFE team) at Avignon University, she has published a total of 40 publications and holds 11 patents.

Nagy is a founder and Head of R&D of MiNA Therapeutics. For over three decades Nagy has been at the forefront of clinical research and clinical practice in cancer. He pioneered the first clinical trial in the use of adenovirus and plasmid for the treatment of liver cancer, as well as the use of plasmid gene therapy in hydrodynamic gene delivery. Currently, he is driving the development of an saRNA drug (a new class of medicines) which is currently being trialed in patients with liver cancer in eight UK centres, and sites in Singapore and Taiwan (OUTREACH study, ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT02716012), a second trial in patients with solid tumours (TIMEPOINT study, ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT 04105335) in the UK, USA, Europe, Singapore and Taiwan and OUTREACH2 study, which is a randomised phase II follow-on study in patient with viral HCC (ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT 04710641). He has published widely in gene therapy, stem cell therapy, oligonucleotides, endoscopy and surgery. Previously Nagy was founder and Chairman of EMcision Limited (acquired by Boston Scientific Inc in 2018). Nagy is Lead Clinician and Head of the Department of HPB Surgery at Imperial College London.

Dr. Luis Jesús Villarreal-Gómez, studied Chemistry-Biology at the University of Sonora, Hermosillo, México and graduated in 2004. He then received his Ph.D. degree in 2013 at the University Autonomous of Baja California, Tijuana, México where he joined as a full research professor. Dr. Villarreal is founder and editor in chief of the Revista de Ciencias Tecnológicas (RECIT) (ISSN 2594-1925) and is editorial board member of several journals edited from MDPI, Hindawi, BenthamOpen, amongst others. Until now, he has published 34 papers and has reviewed more than 130 reviews. His research lines are biomaterials, tissue engineering, drug delivery systems, and biotechnology

Dr Sinda Lepetre-Mouelhi, Ph.D. in organic chemistry (2001), is Associate Professor since 2006 at InstitutGalien (Faculty of Pharmacy, Paris-Saclay Univ., France) and works in the team “Nanomedicine for the treatment of severe diseases » headed byDr. Julien Nicolas. She possesses a strong experience in chemical synthesis, formulation, nanomedicine and drug delivery. Since her recruitment, she developed the chemistry of squalene bioconjugatesand their formulation into nanoparticles. The main fields of application of thesesqualene-basednanomedicinesinclude cancer, HIV, neurologicaldisorders (brainischemia, spinal cordinjury) and more recently pain.She is currently developing nanomedicine scapable of precise and efficient delivery of natural Leu-enkephalines for pain control associated with inflammatory events. This discovery opens a new exciting perspective for an efficient treatment of intense pain, which evades the severe side effects associated with morphine or relatedsyntheticopioids. DrLepetre is also an expert for different national agencies (UPSA, SFETD) in the area of pain andisco-author of 41 peer review articles in international journals (Nature Nanotechnology, Advanced drug delivery reviews, Science Advances, Journal of controlled release, etc.…), as well as patent and book chapters.

Ao Zhang is currently a Distinguished Professor in Medicinal Chemistry, and the Dean of School of Pharmaceutical Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Dr. Zhang was awarded the Ph.D. diploma in Organic Chemistry in 2000, he then joined Georgetown University Medical Center as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Washington DC. In 2002, he became a member of the Medicinal Chemistry Program as a Research Investigator at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He was promoted to Instructor at Harvard Medical School in 2003 and Assistant Director of the Medicinal Chemistry Program at McLean Hospital in 2004. He was awarded Alfred Pope Young Investigator Award in 2004 and Adam Corneel Young Investigator Award in 2005 from Harvard Medical School. In 2006 he became the Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and was awarded the Distinguished Young Investigator Award from Chinese Natural Science Foundation in 2011. Since 2020, he joined Shanghai Jiao Tong University and was elected as the Dean of School of Pharmaceutical Science. His research interests include the design and synthesis of novel small molecules as structural and functional probes for the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders and cancer by using the state-of-art medicinal chemistry strategy. He has authored or co-authored over 180 publications and 70 patents. Several drug candidates from his research group are now under preclinical studies, and three drugs have been approved for clinical trial by Chinese FDA and are now undergoing phase I-II investigations.

Sayumi Yamazoe joined Bristol Myers Squibb in 2017 after completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech and Stanford University. Sayumi received my PhD from Kyoto University, where she discovered a novel small molecule that impacts oncogenic signaling pathway. As a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, she successfully synthesized photosensitive macrocyclic molecules for conditional gene silencing. At Genentech, Sayumi worked on synthesis and development of small molecules that perturb, degrade oncogenic proteins. Her current research focus is to develop next-gen ADCs for immuno-oncology therapies.

Vakhtang Barbakadze has his expertise in isolation and structure elucidation of a new series of plant polyethers, which are endowed with pharmacological properties as immunomodulatory, antioxidant, antiinflammatory, wound-healing and anti-cancer agents. Besides, he interested in enantioselective synthesis and biological activities of basic monomeric moiety of these biopolyethers, synthesis of enantiomerically pure epoxides as chiral building blocks for the production of synthetic analogues of natural polyethers by chemical and enzymetic catalysis. He has received PhD degree in Chemistry and DSci degree in Biology in 1978 and 1999 from Institute of Organic Chemistry, Moscow, Russia and Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Tbilisi, Georgia, respectively. He is Head of the Department of Plant Biopolymers and Chemical Modification of Natural Compounds at Tbilisi State Medical University I.Kutateladze Institute of Pharmacochemistry. In 1996 and 2002 he has been a visiting scientist at Utrecht University, Departments of Pharmacognosy and Medicinal Chemistry, Utrecht, The Netherlands, by University Scholarship and The Netherlands organization for scientific research (NWO) Scholarship Scientific Program, respectively. He is also an organizing committee member and renowned speaker for many reputed scientific conferences. He has published more than 100 papers in reputed journals. In 2004 he was Georgian State Prize Winner in Science and Technology.

Dr. Xueping Hu is currently an associate professor of computational chemistry at Shandong University. She received her PhD in 2018. In 2018–2021, she worked as post-doctoral fellow at College of Pharmaceutical Sciences,Zhejiang University, in the group of Prof. Tingjun Hou. Her main interest are structure-based drug design and molecular dynamic simulations. She has published 23 articles in peer reviewed journals such as Advanced Science, European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Acta Pharmacologica Sinica and Drug Discovery Today.

Prof. Hossam Hassan, is working as a working professor of natural product chemistry since November 2021. He got his PhD in collaboration between Faculty of Pharmacy, Beni-Suef University and University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM), USA, 2011. Then he got scholarship for 6 months as a visiting professor at SIO, UCSD, 2013-2014. Prof. Hassan has more than 100 international papers and he gave many talks about different strategies in drug discovery

Dr.Yinghuai Zhu received his Ph. D degree (1997) in organometallic chemistry from Nankai University. He then worked at Nankai University for around three years as an Assistant/Associate Professor, respectively. Before joining the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences, A*STAR in 2002 as senior research fellow, he did his boron chemistry research in Northern Illinois University as a post-doctoral research fellow. He started to work at School of Pharmacy, Macau University of Science and Technology in 2017 and late joined SunshineLake Pharma Co. Ltd. as an expert in new drug development. Dr. Zhu’s researches focus on boron chemistry and catalysis. He has published 85 articles in peer reviewed journals such as AngewChemInt Ed, J Am ChemSoc and ACS Catal, 12 book chapters and more than 40 conference contributions with more than3150 citations.

Dr.Liao joinedUniversity of California of Riverside as founding faculty of Bioengineering Department in 2006. Dr.Liao’s research at UCR has been focused on the development of a novel high-sensitive and quantitative FRET(qFRET) technology platforms for protein-protein interactions in Ubiquitin-like pathways in various diseases including inflammations, host-virus interaction, cancers and diabetes. Dr.Liao obtained his Ph.D from the UCLA School of Medicine, where he discovered the first SUMOylation E3 ligase family, which plays critical roles in Immunol regulations and life cycle ofinfluenza viruses and SARS-CoV-2, and leads to synthetic lethality of KRAS and cMyc mutant cancers and enhancer for immune checkpoint inhibitors. After his Ph.D., Dr.Liao went to receive his Post-doc. training in the Department of Chemistry at Scripps Research Institute under the supervision of Dr.Peter Schultz, where he discovered the human sweet receptors and applied chemical biology in GPCR and others in human genome. Prior to joining UCR, Dr.Liao held joint appointments as senior research fellow in Genomic Institute of Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) and the Scripps Research Institute, wherehe discovered new lipid GPCR for insulin resistance and drug discoveries in neurodegerative diseases and diabetes. Prior to that, Dr.Liao was Principle Investigator and Founding Scientist of GPCR platform, where his responsibilities included novel GPCR discovery and GPCR drug discovery.Dr.Liao was mainly involved in the target -identification and side-effect elucidation of FTY720 (Gilenya), a then-phase II drug in Novartis, which later became the best-selling drug in Novartis for The HTS led by Dr.Liao and subsequent characterizations of EDG1-specific agonist has led to the discovery of novel S1P1 agonist, SEW2871, leading to market drugs and several follow-up drugs or new companies.The ozanimod was licensed to Receptos that was acquired for $7.4 billions in 2015 by Celgene, which recently acquired by BMS for $72 billions, which became the largest licensing deal in the history of Scripps Research Institute. Two new drugs based in Dr.Liao’s discovery, siponimod in Novartis and ozanimod in BMS, were recently approved by the FDA.Dr.Liao initiated the discovery of the first non-peptide agonist for GLP1 receptor, Boc5. Dr.Liao was the founder of Argusina, where he directed the discovery and optimizations of the first orally available small molecule agonists of GLP1 receptor in the world. Dr.Liao’s work has led to more than 70 publications and 28 patents. Dr.Liao was elected as an Outstanding Oversea Scholar of Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (2009) and a Fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Dr. Guansai Liu is Executive Director of Chemistry at Discovery Chemistry Unit, HitGen Inc. Liu performed his doctoral research on total synthesis of natural products under Professor Zhujun Yao’s guidance at University of Science and Technology of China. After obtained his Ph.D degree in 2010, he then worked at Georgia State University as a post-doctoral research fellow, working on aminohydroxylations of olefins with non-precious metal catalysis. In November of 2013, Liu joined HitGen Inc. that is a biotech company focusing on early drug discovery with core technical platforms of DNA-encoded chemical library, fragment-based drug discovery, structure-based drug design and targeted protein degradation. Liu’s current researches focus on design, synthesis and application of DNA-encoded chemical libraries. He leads the team to develop over 50 novel DNA-compatible chemistries that have been never reported in literatures and to apply the chemistries for building one-trillion DNA-encoded small molecule libraries. He has published 26 articles in peer reviewed journals such as J. Am. Soc. Chem., Org. Lett.,etc.

Dr. Maryam Foroozesh, Margaret W. Kelly Endowed Professor in Chemistry, is an organic chemist with 29 years of experience in academia. Dr. Foroozesh obtained her bachelor’s degree from the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and her Doctoral degree from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. She joined the Department of Chemistry at Xavier University of Louisiana in 1995. The Foroozesh research group projects focus on the design and synthesis of ceramide-mimicking agents with the potential for the reversal of chemo- and endocrine-resistance in breast cancer, followed by their in vitro and in vivo biological studies; and the design and synthesis of novel mechanism-based inhibitors of the cytochrome P450 enzymes involved in carcinogenesis, followed by their structure activity studies. These projects have led to a number of peer-reviewed publications and presentations, as well as a patent. The Foroozesh group has many fruitful research collaborations nationally and internationally and has been funded by grants from multiple local and federal funding agencies. Over the years, Dr. Foroozesh has served in a variety of administrative positions including as the Head of the Chemistry Department, Interim Head of Physics Department, Interim Associate Vice President for Research and Sponsored Programs, Chair of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Chair of the Division of Biological and Applied Health Sciences. She has also served as the Chair and/or Member of a number of important university and departmental committees. In addition, in her position as the Chair of the two largest divisions on campus, she was involved in the development of a number of new academic programs (the Data Science and the Bioinformatics Bachelor of Science programs, and the Speech Pathology and the Public Health in Health Equity Master of Science programs). She served as the Principal Investigator and Program Director for Xavier’s United States National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) Program, focusing on increasing the number of underrepresented minority students pursuing graduate degrees in biomedical sciences, for eleven years. She is currently the Lead Principal Investigator, and Administrative Core and Research Enrichment Core Director for the NIH-funded Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity(BUILD) Program, now in its ninth year at Xavier University.

Dr. Nejla Cini receivedtwoseparatePh.D. degrees in chemistryfrombothUniversity of Strasbourg (UdS), EcoleDoctorale de Physique et Chimie–Physique, Institut Charles Sadron (ICS), Strasbourg, France, andIstanbul Technical University (ITU), Istanbul, Turkiye, in 2010 in theframe of jointdoctoratethesis. Shewasawardedbythe post-graduatefellowship of French Government (BourseduGouvernementFrançais (BGF), Co-Tutelle de Thèse) in thecourse of her Ph. D. studies in France. Shejoined ITU, ScienceandLetterFaculty, ChemistryDepartment as a researchandteachingassistant in 2001, andreceived her M. Sci. degree, from ITU in 2003, and is currently a ResearcherandLecturer Dr. at thesamedepartment.Her researchfocuses on design of intelligentmaterials, layer-by-layer (LbL) basedself-assembledmultifunctionalsystems, drugdeliveysystems, druganalysis, ionicmacromolecues, polyelectrolytecomplexes, nanocoatingandnanomaterials. Shehas served as expertevaluatorfortheEuropeanCommissionandshe has reviewedmorethanfiftyarticlesforhighimpactscientificjournals of Elsevier, Springer/Plenum, andWileyPublishers.She is alsoan activeguesteditorin bioengineeringforJoVEcoveredbySCI-E.

Dr Krisztina Kovacs graduated in 2001 as a medical doctor and defended her PhD in 2005 at University of Pécs Medical School (Pecs, Hungary). She works as associate professor, head of department of Medical Biochemistry at University of Pécs MedicalSchool (Pecs, Hungary). She has co-authored more than 50 scientific publications, which have received more than 1200 citations, her publication H-index is 24, and she has been an invited speaker at several prestigious conferences. Dr Kovacs is a member of 3 Hungarian and 3 international societies and a reviewer in several journals and scientific foundations. Her main research area is the usage of PARP inhibitors and other compounds in cancer therapies.

Dr Asmaa AboulMagd is an associate professor of medicinal chemistry, faculty of pharmacy, Nahda University. She got her Ph.D. from faculty of pharmacy, Ain Shams University in 2016. Her thesis was focused on synthesis of phthalazine based compounds as VEGFR inhibitors. Her main interest was synthesis of small heterocyclic molecules as possible cytotoxic candidates. She published more than 30 articles in well reputational journals.