MEDCHEMMEET2024

Dr. Kozikowski is world renowned for his work in the area of medicinal chemistry designing NCEs for both cancer and CNS disorders. He has over 550 publications and 100 patents. He trained at the University of Michigan, Berkeley, and Harvard, worked for 40+ years as a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, the Mayo Clinic, the Georgetown University Medical Center, and was the Director of the Drug Discovery Program at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Dr. Kozikowski is a co-founder of Actuate Therapeutics (pancreatic cancer drug in Phase 2), Bright Minds Biosciences (epilepsy drug in Phase 1) and is now setting up StarWise Psychedelics to advance the use of 5-HT2A agonists for neurological and psychiatric disorders. He is also the inventor of the PSMA targeting motif that has been employed in several recently marketed PSMA imaging agents, and as well as he did pioneering chemistry and biology on the memory drug Huperzine A that is sold as a nutraceutical agent. He has also invented a host of HDAC6 selective inhibitors such as the tool molecule Tubastatin A that has been used in over 100 published research articles to further probe HDAC biology. One of his licensed HDAC6 inhibitors has recently achieved orphan drug status for use in the treatment of advanced melanoma, and he continues to explore the application of these agents in treating rare and neglected diseases

Dr Laurent Désaubry is a CNRS Director of Research at the Center of Research in Biomedicine of Strasbourg affiliated to the University of Strasbourg and INSERM. After a Ph.D. degree in medicinal chemistry and postdoctoral internship at SUNY at Stony Brook (USA) he joined CNRS as Research Senior Scientist at the University of Strasbourg. He was promoted CNRS research director (corresponds to full professor) in 2014, and was appointed adjunct professor at Tianjin University of Science and Technology from 2015 to 2019. He is serving as an editorial board member of Frontiers in Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, and International Journal of Molecular Science.

Professor Richardson holds the Alan Mackay-Sim Distinguished Chair of Cancer Cell Biology at Griffith University, Brisbane, and is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia Senior Principal Research Fellow. He is a multi-disciplinary medicinal chemist/biochemist/pharmacologist whose career has spanned medicinal chemistry, drug design/development/commercialisation, cancer biology, and neurobiology. He has published 470 articles, reviews, patents, chapters etc., over his career with >91% as first, senior, or corresponding author (H-index: 104; >47,000 citations over entire career; Google Scholar 8/4/222 with >19,400 citations over the past 5 years and H-index of 61 past 5 years; Google Scholar 8/4/23). He was recently honoured by the international Otto Krayer Award in Pharmacology 2022 from the American Society of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) and the Distinguished Fellow Award from the Royal College of Pathologists Australasia Professor Richardson has been Executive Editor of BBA-General Subjects and served on the Ed. Boards of 54 journals, including: JBC, Antioxidants Redox Signaling, Biochem. J., Free Radic. Biol. Med., Pharmacol. Res., J. Clin. Pathology (Assoc. Ed.), Int. J. Biochem. Cell Biology, BBA-Mol. Cell. Res., Mol. Pharmacol., Pharmacol. Res., Cancers, etc. As a major translational research achievement, he developed the redox active anti-cancer and anti-metastatic drug, DpC, which overcomes P-glycoprotein-mediated resistance and up-regulates the metastasis suppressor, NDRG1. This led to commercialisation of DpC and the international company, Oncochel Therapeutics LLC, USA and its Australian subsidiary, Oncochel Therapeutics Pty Ltd. Notably, DpC entered multi-centre Phase I clinical trials for advanced and resistant cancer. These anti-cancer drugs target the lysosome via the P-glycoprotein transporter.

Full Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome. Prof. Secci's scientific activity is documented by more than 140 papers in refereed international journals, with collaborations both with the academic world and pharmaceutical industry covering the following main research topics here breafly summarized: - Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of new selective inhibitors on monoamine oxidases, MAO-A and MAO-B - Design, synthesis and determination of the activity of selective inhibitors of human carbonic anhydrase with antitumor activity and hybrid CAI-CORMs compounds with anti-inflammatory activity - Design synthesis and characterization of composite materials based on metal organic frameworks - Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of novel epigenetic modulators with special reference to acetyltransferase inhibitors (HATs) with apoptotic and cytodifferentiating activity - Separation by stereo selective HPLC of biologically active chiral molecules - Development, extraction, purification, and physicochemical and functional characterization of monoclonal antibodies and therapeutic proteins produced in Plant Molecular Farming (PMF). Prof. Secci is Laboratory Responsible for Quality Management in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Technology, Sapienza Rome University, Coordinator of the Paul Ehrlich European Medicinal Chemistry Ph.D. Network, and Member of the Faculty board of the Ph.D. program in "Pharmaceutical Sciences".

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.

Mario de la Fuente, PharmD, PhD, is an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and the founder of GONOGO solutions LLC. His work encompasses the exploration of neuropharmacology to enable drug discovery efforts, with an emphasis on addressing translational pitfalls. Trained in Medicinal Chemistry, Dr. de la Fuente supports discovery efforts across a wide array of fields in neuroscience. Over the last decade, Dr. de la Fuente's work has paid special attention to psychedelics and related scaffolds to explore uncharted therapeutic avenues for unmet neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders. He has authored over 30 original articles and is an inventor on several patents. His research has led to significant achievements, including the discovery of the neurogenesis-inducing properties of alkaloids found in Ayahuasca and the unveiling of a persisting epigenetic substrate supporting psychedelic pro-synaptic properties. As part of his research and support to operational and strategic endeavors in drug development, Dr. de la Fuente has also focused on developing preclinical models of translational value. He has fully-automated a behavioral assay and developed a molecular predictor of psychedelic activity in mice, further enhancing our understanding of the molecular and behavioral signatures of these drugs and paving the way for their potential applications.