Senior Scientist, Target Protein Design
Pravien Abeywickrema joined Merck & Co., Inc. in 2003. His current responsibilities as an Associate Principal Scientist in target Protein Design group at Merck comprise the production of high quality proteins to structurally enable drug discovery programs. His research focus is in integral membrane protein design, production, characterization for structure determination and biologics discovery. He received his Bachelors of Science in Biology and Computer Science from University of Wisconsin-Superior and his Masters of Biotechnology from University of Pennsylvania.

Customer Data Scientist, Training Business Development
Patrick has made a career out of creating and delivering software and training for data scientists, particularly those who love R. He has worked on Oracle R Enterprise at Oracle, RevoScaleR at Revolution Analytics, Bioconductor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and S-PLUS at Insightful Corporation (now part of the Spotfire division of TIBCO). Just prior to joining H2O.ai, he spent a year at an e-commerce company where he used H2O to drive marketing decisions. Patrick received an MS in Statistics from the University of Washington and a BS in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Senior Scientist, Discovery Chemistry and Technology
Ashley Adams obtained her undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. She then moved to Stanford University to complete her PhD in chemistry with Professor Justin Du Bois. Following her dissertation, she joined the Fragment Based Drug Discovery Chemistry team at AbbVie.

Associate Principal Scientist, Screening & Compound Profiling
Dr. Ai has a PhD in Biochemistry from the Ohio State University. From 2005-2007 she was a Post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Virginia Zakian’s Laboratory at Princeton University. Since 2007 she has been at Merck Research Laboratories in various groups, the Apoptosis Research Group, Cardiovascular Diseases, In vitro Pharmacology and currently in Screening & Compound Profiling.

Graduate Student, Laboratory of Dr. Craig Crews, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Biography

Professor, Center for Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa
Biography

Professor, Center for Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa
Mark Albrecht, PhD joined the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) in March 2012. As the acting Chief of the Antibacterials Branch he manages a diverse portfolio of public-private partnerships to advance the development of antibacterial products toward consideration for regulatory approval for both public health and biodefense indications. In this role, Dr. Albrecht works with industry representatives and multiple government agencies to find new partnership opportunities and strengthen collaborations. Prior to joining BARDA, Dr. Albrecht was a Senior Staff Scientist at the Biological Defense Research Directorate (BDRD) within the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) were he was responsible for leading the Navy’s programs on passive immune-therapy and multi-valent/agent vaccination strategies based on recombinant proteins and DNA. Dr. Albrecht received his B.A. in Biology from the Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA and attended the University of California Riverside where he received his PhD in Microbiology for research on the sensitivity and resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and B. cepacia to antimicrobial peptides and the role of alginate lyase during P. aeruginosa biofilm formation.

Head, Gene and Cell Therapy Group, Division of Hematology, Medicine
Dr. Evren Alici is an Assistant Professor of Hematology at Karolinska Institutet, Department of Medicine, Stockholm, Sweden. He received his MD and did his residency at the Ege University. He received his PhD in 2006 at Karolinska Institutet. His main research interest is natural killer cells, multiple myeloma, lentiviral and retroviral gene transfer, stem cell transplantation and immunology. He is a member of several international and national committees, advisory boards and scientific meetings. He has mentored many trainees, 3 PhD students and 2 post docs.

Principal Scientist, Infectious Diseases
Carl received his PhD in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology from Harvard University, where he studied the biosynthesis of various biologically active natural products in the lab of Christopher T. Walsh. Carl subsequently joined the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) as a postdoctoral fellow, studying isoprenoid biosynthesis via the mevalonate pathway in Staphylococcus aureus and the MEP and CoA pathways in Escherichia coli. He was hired on at Novartis afterwards as an Investigator in the infectious diseases department working in the early space to interrogate the physiology of various bacterial pathogens and discover novel antibacterial compound/target pairs. Carl joined Merck in 2012 where he currently holds the position of Principal Scientist and is responsible for early discovery, target identification and validation, and Lead ID activities in support of antibacterial drug discovery.

President and CEO
Dr. Bantia has over 20+ years of experience in biotech industry thinking outside the box and creating value for the asset. Her scientific interest and expertise spans multiple therapeutic areas which include oncology, immunology and infectious disease. As Head of Discovery Biology at BioCryst, she discovered and supervised preclinical biological work and advanced a number of compounds in the clinic in the areas of oncology, virology and inflammation. She was a key contributor to the discovery and advancement of RAPIVAB for the treatment of influenza; discovered and advanced BCX4430, Viral RNA polymerase inhibitor, as broad spectrum anti-viral agent (BSAV) and found a new use for the compound (BCX-4430) on the shelf which is currently in Phase I clinical trials for the treatment of Marburg Ebola and other deadly viral diseases. At Nitor Therapeutics based on careful re-interpretation of the literature (clinical and preclinical) and a series of new experiments, she discovered that pharmacologic inhibition of Purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP) actually results in immune enhancing effects not immune-suppression. A new method of use patents filed and currently Nitor is developing PNP inhibitors as immune-oncology agents.

Associate Professor and Director, Target Identification and Validation Program, Department of Experimental Therapeutics, Division of Cancer Medicine
Geoffrey Bartholomeusz has worked extensively as a cancer biologist with expertise in both molecular biology and drug development. A goal of his research is to utilize high throughput siRNA screens in a 3D cell culture assay to identify novel targets regulating the tumor architecture. His hypothesis driven study proposes that altering the tumor architecture will lower the levels of hypoxia within solid tumors sensitizing these tumors to irradiation and/or chemotherapy. In an attempt to confirm this hypothesis his team has developed a 3D spheroid cell culture model that has similarities to hypoxic regions of solid tumors. They have performed a high throughput siRNA screen and identified and validated potential targets whose silencing reduced the levels of hypoxia within the spheroid, and inhibited HIF1α activity. Studies are currently ongoing to confirm the hypothesis and test small molecules developed against these targets as potential anticancer agents. As a member of a multi-investigator group within MD Anderson Cancer Center Dr. Bartholomeusz is also involved in developing a technology that will permit them to regenerate tumors in the lab utilizing biopsy tissue with the goal of developing cancer patient specific drug cocktails.

Practice Leader, TechVision-Innovation Services
Dr. Sudeep Basu is the Global Practice Leader for Innovation Services at Frost & Sullivan. He advises Government agencies, Universities, Corporate R&D and the U.S. National Labs on Technology Innovation, Intellectual Property strategy and R&D policy. He has worked extensively with organizations and institutions in the U.S, Japan, Poland, Malaysia, Turkey and India. Dr Basu is an honorary guest faculty at Rutgers University and Stanford University. He also serves as a faculty mentor and as an advisor to the Coulter Translational Partnership Program, University of Pittsburgh and is a member of the Bio-Engineering Advisory Council, University of Missouri. He has been an AHA fellow, an IPIBS fellow, and a TATA scholar. He is an alumnus of the University of Louisville, Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T),Bombay and the University of Mumbai.

CEO and Founder
Keith Batchelder is the founder and CEO of Genomic Healthcare Strategies, a company focused on the changes in healthcare resulting from advances in molecular medicine. GHS provides strategy and implementation services for companies looking to enter or grow in the new markets emerging as result of predictive diagnostics and preventive medicine. Dr. Batchelder has long been interested in the intersection of the scientific, business and societal promises and challenges raised by personalized medicine. His area of expertise is in the analysis of new markets, channels, partners, and the new science supporting the rapidly evolving practice of medicine and wellness. During a career that has spanned medical research, clinical practice, and management in start-ups and large organizations, Dr. Batchelder focuses on the practical application of advanced healthcare innovation and its economics. He has served as chief technical officer of WorldCare International Clinical Trials, where he used biomarkers as surrogate endpoints for successful FDA approvals; as CIO of Harvard Salud Integral, where he helped to raise funding and grow a start-up HMO in Mexico City; as a principal of AMICAS Corp, where he took a web-based radiology system from concept to a venture-funded and profitable software company; and at Massachusetts General Hospital for eight years, where as a staff member he conducted industry sponsored research in innovative drug discovery, invented novel techniques and published in peer reviewed journals. Dr. Batchelder was educated at Middlebury College, the Hahnemann University School of Medicine, received postgraduate training in Medical Informatics at The Boston VA Hospital and completed a fellowship at the Food and Drug Administration. He also holds a Master’s degree in biomaterials from New York University. Dr. Batchelder writes and speaks frequently on the topic of personalized medicine (e.g., Nature Biotechnology, Scientific American conference on Targeted Medicine, Burrill & Co, LabCompete, Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference) and has organized several well attended symposia on Personalized Medicine. Dr. Batchelder, acting on his belief in the potential of personalized medicine, is one of the first ten volunteers to have their full duplex genomes sequenced and published in Harvard Genetics Professor George Church’s Personal Genome Project.

Senior Research Scientist, I Fibrosis
Biography

Professor, Neurobiology
Bruce Bean is Robert Winthrop Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Bean graduated from Harvard College, received a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Rochester, did postdoctoral work with Richard W. Tsien at the Yale School of Medicine, and has previously held faculty positions at the University of Iowa and the Vollum Institute of Oregon Health Sciences University. His research interests are in the electrophysiology of neurons and muscle and in using ion channels to develop new therapeutic treatments.

Postdoctoral Scholar, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with a BS in Biology in 2007, Dr. Bednash remained in Pittsburgh for medical school, completing his MD in 2012. During his undergraduate medical education, he completed a scholarly project investigating the use of chemopreventative agents in head and neck cancer. Dr. Bednash subsequently joined the UPMC Internal Medicine Residency program and transitioned into Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowship in the research pathway. Currently a T32 postdoctoral scholar, his research focuses on the molecular regulation of the inflammasome by the ubiquitin-proteasome system with the goal of designing novel therapeutics for the treatment of inflammatory disease.

Group Leader, Division of Molecular Carcinogenesis and NKI Robotics and Screening Center
Roderick Beijersbergen is group leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and heads the NKI Robotics and Screening Center. His work evolves around the development and application of large-scale functional genomic technologies with the goal to identify more effective cancer treatments. His group pioneered the pooled shRNA screening technology which has been extended to CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing based screening including CRISPRi and CRISPRa. These large-scale functional genomic screens have led to the identification of novel targets for cancer therapy, to the understanding of the mechanisms of action of novel drugs and the identification of novel mechanisms of acquired resistance to pathway targeted therapeutics. Based on these results treatment combinations have been identified currently in several clinical trials with promising results.

Scientific Leader, Encoded Library Technologies, R&D Platform Technology & Science
Svetlana Belyanskaya is Scientific Leader at Encoded Library Technology (ELT) group at GlaxoSmithKline. Svetlana has been involved in the development of DNA-encoded technology at Praecis Pharmaceutical and significantly contributed in designing and adapting the DNA tagging strategies for DNA- Encoded Libraries. She led biochemistry and affinity based selection effort for several targets, partnered between GSK and Praecis Pharmaceutical. This effort resulted in the discovery of a series of potent and selective inhibitors, one of which is currently undergoing clinical trials. Post GSK acquisition, Svetlana led a team of scientists in the ELT Lead Discovery group and was responsible for ELT selections against multiple targets. Her team discovered multiple target specific small molecules with different MOAs, several of which were the first known small molecule inhibitors for novel targets.

Senior Scientist, Discovery Biology
Dr. Andrew Bender is a Principal Scientist at EMD Serono working in the Immunology group. He performs translational research helping to progress projects from late preclinical to early clinical trials. His work involves pharmacology studies and biomarker development using animal models as well as human samples to support drug development for autoimmune diseases. Before starting at EMD Serono he worked for 5 years at Eisai in a similar role. He performed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington studying the role of phosphodiesterase enzymes in immune cells in the lab of Dr. Joe Beavo. He earned a PhD in pharmacology at the University of Michigan where his thesis focused on the cellular regulation of nitric oxide synthase enzymes. For his undergraduate training he attended DePauw University where he earned a BA in chemistry. At EMD Serono his research has resulted in one publication reporting on the role of BTK in driving disease in animal models of lupus (Bender AT et. Clin Immunol 2016) and one describing how the ability of BTK Inhibitors to sequester Y551 and prevent phosphorylation determines their potency for inhibition of Fc receptor but not B cell receptor signaling (Bender AT et al. Mol Pharm 2017).

Investigator III, Chemical Biology and Therapeutics
Phil Bergman heads a laboratory in the Chemical Biology and Therapeutics Department at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research. He became interested in the field of autophagy in 2005 when working in Dr. Leon Murphy’s research group at NIBR. He received his Bachelor of Science in Molecular and Cellular Biology in 1994 from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA and has extensive experience in biopharmaceutical research labs in both Seattle WA and Cambridge MA. His technical expertise includes high content imaging platforms, CRISPR technology, target identification, and high-throughput assay development.

Principal Scientist, Hepatitis Discovery
Jan Martin Berke, PhD, studied cell biology / molecular virology in Germany and Switzerland. He joined Tibotec/Janssen’s Hepatitis C discovery group in Belgium as a PostDoc back in 2007 where he developed phenotyping assays for the support of clinical trials with Simeprevir (HCV protease inhibitor) and early development compounds. Subsequently Jan Martin built discovery capabilities for HBV direct antivirals and serves as a biology project leader for Janssens capsid assembly modulator program, which lead to the nomination of JNJ-6379 (Phase II) and JNJ-0440 (Phase I) as New Molecular Entities.”

Executive Director, Infectious Diseases, Basic Research, Merck Research Laboratories

Associate Research Fellow
Dr. Boehm is at Pfizer Worldwide R&D in Cambridge, MA, where he is a Computational Chemist in the Inflammation & Immunology chemistry group. After studying chemistry at the University of Regensburg in Germany, he obtained his PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Marburg in Germany.

Director of Sequencing Technologies, Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology and Director, Single-Cell Sequencing Core
Sarah Boswell is a staff scientist specializing in RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) at Harvard Medical School (HMS). She is the Director of Sequencing Technologies within the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology and is also the Director of the Single-Cell Sequencing Core recently established at HMS to bring inDrops single-cell RNA-Seq to the greater Boston scientific community. She advises users on experimental design and optimization as well as managing core operations. She works closely with the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology (LSP) bioinformatics core and the Harvard Chan Bioinformatics Core to ensure a seamless transition between experiment and analysis. Sarah completed her PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and did her post-doctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital. She later joined LSP as a staff scientist specializing in sequencing technologies. She continues to carry out experiments, publish scientific papers, and give lectures on RNA-Seq methodologies.

Head, Biologics Research
Biography

CSO
Andrew Bradbury was trained in medicine at the universities of Oxford and London, and subsequently practiced medicine for five years in the UK. He received his PhD (Cambridge University) in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology under the guidance of Dr. Cesar Milstein. After his PhD he spent ten years in Italy: three as a post doc in the CNR Institute of neurobiology, Rome, Italy; and seven in Trieste, as an assistant professor at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA, Trieste, Italy). He was a scientist at Los Alamos National Lab from 1999 to 2017, when he retired to become full-time CSO of Specifica, a company he founded in 2016 to produce high quality antibody libraries. He has worked in display technologies and antibody engineering for over thirty years, and has helped organize over sixty international congresses and practical courses in these fields, both in Europe and the US. He has published over 170 articles, including a number of reviews and commentaries on display technologies, antibody engineering, and the use of sequenced recombinant antibodies to eliminate waste in research. He was one of the founder members, and first president, of “The Antibody Society”, and remains on the board. His present research interests lie in using next generation sequencing to create the best antibody libraries.

Associate Professor, The Laboratory of Genetically Encoded Small Molecules
Sean F. Brady graduated with a degree in molecular biology in 1993 from Pomona College in Claremont, California. He received his PhD in organic chemistry from Cornell University in 2001. In 2002, he moved to Harvard Medical School as a fellow in the Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology. He was named an instructor in the department of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School in 2004. In 2006 he moved to The Rockefeller University as an assistant professor. In 2015 he was promoted to Evnin Associate Professor at The Rockefeller University. In 2016 Sean founded Lodo Therapeutics.

Associate Professor, Medicinal Chemistry, University of Oxford; Principal Investigator, Target Discovery Institute, Structural Genomics Consortium
Paul Brennan received his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley under the mentorship of Paul Bartlett working on synthetic methodology for combinatorial chemistry and synthesizing inhibitors for new anti-bacterial targets. Following three years of post-doctoral research with Steve Ley in Cambridge University on the total synthesis of rapamycin, Paul returned to California to take a position at Amgen. His research was focussed on designing and synthesizing kinase inhibitors for oncology. After two years at Amgen, Paul accepted a position as medicinal chemistry design lead at Pfizer in Sandwich, UK. Over the next six years Paul designed and synthesized compounds for most major drug classes: kinases, GPCR’s, CNS-targets, ion-channels and metabolic enzymes. In 2011 Paul joined the Structural Genomics Consortium as a principal investigator to discover chemical probes for epigenetic proteins. He is currently an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the SGC and head of chemistry of the Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford.

Scientist, Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering
Dr. Zachary Britton joined MedImmune in 2012; he has led membrane protein-related efforts in Protein Science and now Antibody Discovery in the Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering Department, where he currently co-leads a pipeline biotherapeutic program. Zack received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 2012, where he developed protein engineering approaches to aid in the expression and purification of GPCRs under Prof. Anne Skaja Robinson.

Research Scientist, p53lab
Biography

Director of External Chemistry, Hit Discovery, Discovery Sciences, IMED Biotech Unit
Dean Brown is currently Director of External Chemistry at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. Dean joined AstraZeneca as a medicinal chemist in the neuroscience disease area. He led the chemistry effort on an NMDA antagonist project for neuropathic pain culminating in two candidates for clinical development. Dean then led the CNS Lead Generation Chemistry group, and was responsible for the delivery of many new LO programs for psychiatry, cognition and neuropathic pain leading to multiple clinical candidates. Dean then moved to Infection with a focus of building new programs for multi-drug resistant infections and respiratory viral infections. In his current role he is responsible for the early stage portfolio of neurodegenerative diseases, open innovation collaborations and DNA-encoded library screening. He is listed as an author and co-author on more than 50 publications and patent applications.

Professor, Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
Eric Brown is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences and member of the M.G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University. Dr. Brown has been the recipient of a number of awards including the Canadian Society of Microbiologists Murray Award for career achievement, the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences Merck Frosst Prize for new investigators and a Canada Research Chair in Microbial Chemical Biology. Dr. Brown is a former department Chair (2008-2013) and has served on advisory boards for a variety of companies as well as national and international associations, including a term as President of the Canadian Society of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology, member of the Medical Review Panel of the Gairdner Foundation and member of the Institute of Infection and Immunity of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Brown Lab researchers are searching for the Achilles heels of drug-resistant superbugs. To this end they are using tools of chemical biology and molecular genetics to probe the complex biology that underlies bacterial survival strategies. The goal of these studies is to contribute to fresh directions for new antibacterial therapeutics.

Director, Computational Biology & Senior Fellow
Responsible for the managing bioinformatics for: 1) Oncology Therapeutic Area including immuno-oncology; 2) Infectious Disease Therapeutic Area Unit including antivirals, antibacterials & host defense; 3) Diseases of the Developing World including TB, malaria and kinetoplastid therapeutics and; 4) Microbiome Collaborative Network which is leading the application of human microbiome studies to drug discovery. Elected as GSK Senior R&D Fellow in 2016.

Head, Biochemistry
Dr. Burg attended graduate school at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he studied membrane proteins and lipid metabolism. He did his postdoctoral research at Stanford University in the laboratory of Chris Garcia, where he focused on the biochemistry and structural biology of G protein coupled receptors. He is now Head of Biochemistry at Ab Initio Biotherapeutics.

Principal Investigator, Structural Genomics Consortium
Nicola Burgess-Brown is the Principal Investigator of the Biotechnology Group at the SGC, responsible for managing all biotech research for the Oxford site. Nicola’s team optimises the high-throughput screening processes from cloning to expression and purification of human proteins for structural and functional studies. The group collaborates and interacts closely with the other SGC teams, to develop methods for increasing protein expression, parallel processing and increasing throughput for soluble and integral membrane proteins (IMPs) involved in human disease. Nicola obtained a First Class degree in Applied Biochemical Sciences from the University of Ulster in 1997 and spent the following year working as a molecular biologist for SmithKline Beecham. She received her PhD in Molecular Microbiology at the University of Nottingham in 2001 and then moved back to industry to work on high-throughput cloning and validation of therapeutic cancer antigens for Oxford Glycosciences and subsequently Celltech R&D.

President and CEO
Dr. Tauseef R. Butt is the President and CEO of Progenra. Dr Butt obtained his PhD degree in Molecular Biology from The University of Glasgow, Scotland. He was a Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, before joining SmithKline Beckman (now GSK) Pharmaceuticals. He was Assistant Director in Research and Development at SmithKline. He also served as Adjunct Professor Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia (1989-2000). He has published over 100 papers in life sciences research. Dr. Butt serves as an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, Philadelphia and is active in a number of national and regional professional organizations, including several dedicated to biotechnology.

President and Physician-in-Chief
Michael A. Caligiuri, MD, is a world-renowned physician, scientist, builder, innovator, leader and visionary. He is dedicated to developing the next generation of leading-edge cancer therapies, rapidly delivering them to patients and ultimately curing the disease. For the past 20 years, Dr. Caligiuri has worked as a physician, scientist and leader in the cancer program at The Ohio State University. He spent the past decade as CEO of The James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute and directed The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center for 14 years, recruiting over 300 cancer physicians and scientists. Dr. Caligiuri is also the current president of the American Association for Cancer Research, the world's largest cancer research organization with 40,000 members in 120 countries. In addition to serving as president of the AACR, he was also recently named a fellow of that organization. A leading researcher in the field of immunology, lymphoma and leukemia, more than 1,500 cancer patients have been treated on clinical trials developed or co-developed by Dr. Caligiuri. He also has trained over 120 undergraduate, graduate or postgraduate students in his laboratory who have received over 230 university, state, national or international awards.
At City of Hope, Dr. Caligiuri's goals are “to speed up the delivery of our discoveries in the laboratory to our patients,” to use his inclusive leadership style to foster greater collaboration across the institution and with other institutions, and to “optimize the patient care system to ensure the highest quality and safest patient experience.”

Professor and Unit Head, Mitochondrial Cell Biology and Pharmacology Research Group RVC
Michelangelo Campanella is an Italian born scientist who found home in the United Kingdom where he moved as EMBO/MARIE CURIE Postdoctoral Research Fellow over ten years ago. Trained as Clinical Pharmacist and a Pharmacologist, he developed technical and cultural proficiency in techniques for the investigation of vital parameters in mammalian cells. Internationally acknowledged as an expert in the field of mitochondrial cell biology and pharmacology he is now Reader enrolled at the Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences of the Royal Veterinary College in London where he leads a research unit affiliated at the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research. Recipient of several awards in research, he is active member of various editorial boards of scientific journals. Committed to the mission of comparative medicine and physiology he was recently selected to coordinate the interest group in Oncology of the Royal Veterinary College. The core of his research focuses on the quality control mechanisms in mammals and organism models, with focus on those underlying cell pathology and inflammation. His scientific breakthroughs, hitherto, regard the hidden pathways of the homeostatic mitochondrial function and their pharmacological regulation. His ambition is to unveil adaptive mechanisms for early detection and targeting of conditions to inform innovative pharmaceutical and nutraceutical approaches. The abnegation for biomedical research, academic education and service towards talented scholars yielded him the Paul Harris Fellowship by the Rotary Foundation in 2014. Passionate about country life he is an eager skier happily married with two children: one baby-boy who keeps him busy with rugby over the weekends and one baby-girl who keeps him awake most of the nights.

Principal Scientist, Discovery Attribute Sciences
Iain Campuzano works in and manages a core analytical research group within Amgen Research Discovery. He has invented/co-invented five mass spectrometry related patents and published over 45 peer reviewer articles and book chapters. He has also presented and organised/chaired sessions at multiple international conferences.

Clinical Development Lead, Liver Fibrosis
Edgar D. Charles, M.D., M.Sc., is the Clinical Development Lead for Fibrosis at Bristol-Myers Squibb. In this position, he provides strategic direction and oversight for BMS’ fibrosis clinical research and development activities, including the design and execution of clinical trials. Prior to assuming his current role at BMS, Edgar was at Merck & Co., where he led efforts through the R&D spectrum from discovery, clinical pharmacology and late-stage drug development across several therapeutic areas. Prior to coming to industry, Edgar was an academic physician-scientist at Rockefeller University, where he led basic and translational research programs investigating the pathogenesis of virus-induced autoimmunity.

Edgar received his M.D. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, his M.Sc. in Clinical Investigation from Rockefeller University, and his B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in infectious diseases at New York University.

Associate Professor, Surgery
Shuibing Chen, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. Dr. Chen combines chemical biology and stem cell biology approaches to identify the small molecules controlling stem cell fate and generate functional tissues and organs. Her research group has established several efficient strategies to direct human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) differentiation to pancreatic beta-like cells, colonic organoids, and cardiac conduction cells, etc. Using hPSC-derived tissues or organs, Dr. Chen has established “disease-in-dish” models to study the role of genetic and environmental factors in the progression of diabetes, pancreatic and colon cancer. The hPSC-based disease model has been adapted to drug screen platform and applied to identify allele-specific drug candidates for precision therapy. Dr. Chen has published more 40 papers on top peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Chemical Biology, Cell Stem Cell etc. She has been awarded as New York Stem Cell Foundation-Robertson Investigator, American Diabetes Association Junior Faculty Award, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and American Association for Cancer Research Career Development Award. Recently, she won 2018 ISSCR Dr. Susan Lim Award for Outstanding Young Investigator.

Vice President, Research
Dr Colussi received his Bachelor of Science degree (Hons) from the University of Sydney before doing his PhD at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign. Following a post-doc focused on apoptosis, Dr Colussi joined New England Biolabs and worked on developing the K. lactis yeast expression platform before moving to TetraGenetics in 2008 to lead the development of the Tetrahymena thermophila expression platform.

Research Fellow, Head, Global Protein Sciences
Ivan Correia is a Research Fellow and currently heads the Global Protein Sciences Group at AbbVie Bioresearch Center (ABC). He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology, a Master of Science degree in Biochemistry, a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a PhD in Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. His post-doctoral training was at the Whitehead Institute, MIT in Cambridge, MA. Prior to joining AbbVie he was Chief Scientific Officer at a start-up biotechnology company. Ivan has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and presented his findings at national and international conferences. His research interests include high resolution imaging to investigate protein and cellular dynamics, deciphering glycan signatures, high throughput automation, biophysical studies and target expression and display for discovery of biological therapeutics.

Associate Professor of Chemistry and Associate Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis
Jason M. Crawford received his doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University before conducting a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He began his independent research lab in the Chemical Biology Institute at Yale in 2012 and is currently the Maxine F. Singer ’57 PhD Associate Professor of Chemistry and of Microbial Pathogenesis. Jason is an active member of the Yale Cancer Center Developmental Therapeutics Program and of the Yale Center for Pulmonary Infection Research and Treatment. Jason’s lab focuses on decoding novel bacterial metabolic pathways associated with human hosts. The lab also interrogates their broader roles in cell biology and medicine.

Associate Principal Scientist, Discovery Chemistry
Brendan Crowley received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Northwestern University and his Ph. D. in organic chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute under the direction of Prof. Dale Boger. Following postdoctoral research with Prof. Sam Danishefsky at Sloan-Kettering, Brendan began his industrial career in medicinal chemistry at Merck at the West Point site. There he has contributed to research projects in neuroscience and infectious disease with a focus on delivering therapeutics for pain, migraine, and cognition as well as the discovery of antiviral and antibacterial agents. He has also contributed to a variety of projects in molecular imaging and synthetic methodology and is currently one of the Merck representatives on the Tuberculosis Drug Accelerator consortium.

Senior Principal Scientist, Computational Chemistry, Discovery Sciences
Max Cummings is a Computational Chemist at Janssen R&D, working on drug discovery in various therapeutic areas. He earned his PhD in Biochemistry under the supervision of Randy J. Read at the University of Alberta, Canada. Dr. Cummings worked in medicinal chemistry and enzymology at SynPhar (now NAEJA), Edmonton, Canada, from 1988-1996, and in the computational chemistry group at SmithKline Beecham (now GSK), King of Prussia, USA, from 1997-2000. In 2000 he joined the computational chemistry group at 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, Exton, USA, which later become part of Johnson & Johnson. In 2007 he moved to Tibotec BVBA, a J&J company, in Mechelen, Belgium, and in 2011 returned to the Janssen R&D site in Spring House, USA.

Associate Professor, Rega Institute - Laboratory of Virology and Chemotherapy
Dirk Daelemans is a molecular cell biologist with focus on nuclear-cytoplasmic transport of the mammalian cell, a process essential for cellular homeostasis, but also for virus replication and cancer. He started his work on this process in the context of viruses and continued this work on cancer drug discovery. The Daelemans lab is exploring the nuclear-cytoplasmic transport process to identify new targets. The lab is now applying CRISPR-based screens for target deconvolution of small-molecule cancer agents and to uncover novel synergistic drug combinations.

Professor, Biotechnology
Professor Tim Dafforn holds a Chair in Biotechnology at the University of Birmingham in the UK. His research spans biophysics, through nanotechnology to biochemistry and has built a reputation in membrane protein extraction techniques. He was one of the inventors of the Styrene Maleic Acid Lipid Particle (SMALP) method for detergent free production of membrane proteins and has continued to develop the technique over the past 9 years. He is also an entrepreneur, founding 2 companies in biophysical instrumentation and rapid diagnostics.

Director, Antibody Therapeutics
Director of Antibody Therapeutics at Achaogen. Formerly Director of Biology at Igenica Biotherapeutics and Senior Research Investigator in Oncology Biotherapeutics at Novartis and Chiron. PhD in Pharmacology & Toxicology from University of Arizona and postdoc work under John Reed at the Sanford Burnham Research Institute.

Senior Study, Director
Dr. DeBalsi is is engaged in enabling and interpreting metabolomics studies that address scientific questions across the research and development space. She joined Metabolon after receiving her PhD in pharmacology from Duke University, where she employed targeted metabolomics to study the role of TXNIP in regulating mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle, followed by postdoctoral research in mitochondrial genetic diseases at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

Professor, Department of Pharmacology
Dr. Lakshmi Devi is a Professor of Pharmacological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA. Her research interests include G protein-coupled receptor dimers and deorphanized receptors as novel therapeutic targets. Dr. Devi has authored > 200 research articles and won many honors and awards including the NIH MERIT award and 2018 WCBR Pioneer Award. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Project Manager, Genome Editing Platform
Vincenzo obtained his PhD at the Institute Curie in Paris (France), where he focused his research on visual system development. There, he developed innovative genome engineering techniques in zebrafish by combining the CRISPR/Cas9 system with other transgenesis approaches, expanding the possibilities of inducible Knock-out and Knock-In. Since 2017, Vincenzo leads the Genome editing platform at ZeClinics where he works on the implementation on novel genome editing tools for disease modelling and target validation.

Director, Antibody Engineering
Gundo Diedrich received his PhD in Chemistry from the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. He completed his postdoctoral training in immunology at Yale University, and worked as a Research Scientist in antibody discovery at Targeted Molecules, diaDexus, and Medimmune. In 2015, he joined MacroGenics where he is Director of Antibody Engineering.

COO
For over 20 years, Dr. Paul Diehl has been involved in developing, launching, and supporting a range of products for genetic analysis and cell biology in various positions at companies such as Arcturus, Agilent Technologies, Display Systems Biotech, and Clontech Laboratories. As chief operating officer for Cellecta, he continues his efforts to help develop and support new technology for functional genetic screening and targeted RNA expression profiling.

Principal Scientist, Microbial Sciences
Dr. Antonio DiGiandomenico is currently a Principal Scientist in the Department of Microbial Sciences at MedImmune/AstraZeneca and has 20 years of experience in microbiology and immunology. Dr. DiGiandomenico began his training in molecular biology and microbial pathogenesis at Duquesne University and continued his doctoral training at the University of Virginia. Upon completion of a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University, Dr. DiGiandomenico accepted a position at MedImmune in 2009. Since arriving at MedImmune, Dr. DiGiandomenico has focused on the development of novel immunotherapeutics against multi-drug resistant bacteria in multiple disease settings and has contributed to pre-clinical and clinical programs.

Associate Director, Genetic Perturbation Platform
Since joining the Broad Institute in 2009, I have engaged in dozens of collaborations centered on functional genomics. As Associate Director of the Genetic Perturbation Platform, my role is to provide expert guidance on the design, execution, and analysis of genetic screens, and have done so with a wide variety of research groups across many areas of biology. Additionally, I have many years of experience in the development and use of functional genomic techniques, first with RNAi and more recently with CRISPR technology for genome-wide loss-of-function screening. As leader of research and development in the Platform, I have stayed on the cutting-edge of newest techniques while also focusing on the reduction-to-practice that is critical for enabling collaboration with a broader community of researchers. Prior to joining the Broad, I received my PhD in biology, training with Phil Sharp, and performed postdoctoral work with Ed Harlow at Harvard Medical School.

Senior Scientist, Cancer Immunology Discovery
Pawel K. Dominik is a Senior Scientist in Protein Engineering department in Cancer Immunology Discovery Unit at Pfizer in South San Francisco, CA. He obtained MSc in Biotechnology from Jagiellonian University, Poland and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from The University of Chicago. His interests focus on application of display technologies for efficient targeting of membrane proteins in native lipid environments. Pawel participated in multiple antibody discovery efforts for therapeutic and structural applications.

Venture Partner, Longwood Fund; CEO and Co-founder of Longwood portfolio Company Axial Biotherapeutics, Inc.
Dr. Donabedian is an accomplished business development and strategy executive with extensive leadership experience. Dr. Donabedian has a track record of building companies, most recently as a Venture Partner at Longwood Fund. Prior to joining Longwood, Dr. Donabedian has held various leadership roles at biopharmaceutical companies including AbbVie and GSK. At AbbVie, Dr. Donabedian served as Vice President & Global Head of Ventures and Early Stage Collaborations where he led a global team that completed significant transactions across multiple therapeutic areas and stages of development. Prior to AbbVie, Dr. Donabedian served as Vice President Global New Deal Strategy and Development at GlaxoSmithKline, and Senior Manager at Accenture’s Strategic Services Consulting Group. He holds a BA in Chemistry from St. Anselm College, a PhD in Polymer Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina. He currently serves on the Board of Alcyone Life Sciences, a privately held CNS company which he co-founded.

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center
Biography

Functional Genomics Lead, Translational Medicine
Lauren Drowley is an Associate Director of Molecular Genetics at UCB Pharma. She received her PhD from University of Pittsburgh focused on stem cell transplantation for myocardial infarct repair and completed a postdoc at AstraZeneca in the UK where she was responsible for developing high content imaging assays with stem/progenitor cell populations for diabetes/obesity indications and examining the role of miRNA in cell differentiation. As an Associate Principal Scientist at AZ, she provided disciplinary scientific leadership on stem cells and regenerative approaches to cardiac repair, including assay development, cell characterization, validation of new modalities and driving key biology in projects. As a Project Leader at AstraZeneca, she led cross-functional teams to progress novel cardiac regeneration project through portfolio while answering key biological questions. In her current role as Associate Director at UCB, she is responsible for functional validation activities for targets emerging from the genetics strategy across all therapy areas including Neuroscience and Inflammation, and utilizes a range of technologies and approaches with close interaction with internal scientists, external key opinion leaders, and CROs with clear communication to leadership. A current focus is identification of new opportunities and application of functional genomics to enhance target identification and validation across early drug discovery.

Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, Head of Infectious Disease Global Innovation
Dr. Michael Dudley has over 30 years of experience in antiinfective drug research and development, with experience in the discovery, preclinical and clinical stages in both academia and industry. He has overseen the development and regulatory approval of 3 antibiotics, most recently a beta-lactamase inhibitor from a new chemical class (vaborbactam) as the combination product Vabomere™ that advanced from discovery to FDA approval in < 8 years. He has been the principal investigator for ~ $200 million funding from public-private partnerships (e.g., BARDA) to advance antimicrobial agents in development in the US and Europe. Prior to his current position, he held positions of increasing responsibilities at small biotech companies include Microcide, Diversa, and Mpex Pharmaceuticals. He cofounded Rempex Pharmaceuticals that was acquired by the Medicines Company in 2013. Prior to his career in pharmaceutical industry, he held academic appointments that included Professor of Pharmacy and Chairman at the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy (URI), and adjunct Professor of Medicine, Brown University School of Medicine, both at Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence, RI. As an academic researcher, he conducted research in infectious disease, including important clinical studies (Phase I-IV) and pioneering work in describing PK-PD approaches and characterization of several classes of antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral agents.

CSO
Dr. Duffy, current chief scientific officer of Melinta, has more than 21 years of pharmaceutical research experience and has been responsible for translating Melinta’s Nobel Prize-winning ribosome technology platform into the discovery and early-stage development of novel antibiotic candidates. She joined the company in 2002 and has become one of the world’s leading experts on the structure and function of the bacterial ribosome and the interaction of antibiotics with their ribosomal targets. Dr. Duffy has led Melinta’s ESKAPE Pathogen Program from its infancy and has been instrumental in advancing the platform while also contributing to the development programs for other drug candidates. The ESKAPE Pathogen Program is Melinta’s most advanced preclinical initiative, focused on using a discrete, novel binding site within the bacterial ribosome to design and develop completely new classes of antibiotics to treat some of the deadliest multi-drug resistant gram-positive and gram-negative infections. Prior to joining Melinta, Dr. Duffy served as associate director of innovative discovery technologies at Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Dr. Duffy began her scientific career as a computational chemist with Pfizer Global Research and Development in Groton, Connecticut. Dr. Duffy trained at Yale University, where she received her Ph.D. in physical-organic chemistry and was a Howard Hughes postdoctoral fellow. She holds a B.S. in chemistry from Wheeling Jesuit University.

Senior Lead Investigator, Translational Medicine
Sudharshan Eathiraj, PhD, MBA. Senior Lead Investigator, ArQuleSudhi Eathiraj is a Senior Lead Investigator at ArQule where he leads discovery and translational development of novel drug candidates to target drug resistance mechanisms in cancer. He is a key contributor of ArQule’s kinase inhibitor discovery platform, and his work led to identification and development of inhibitors for major drug targets, and several of which are currently being evaluated in clinical studies. After receiving his PhD in Biochemistry, he joined UMASS Medical School for post-doctoral research studies, and he is at ArQule since 2007. He has published over twenty peer-reviewed research articles and patents.

Senior Scientist
David is a Senior Scientist at Siamab Therapeutics, a small company developing therapies targeting tumor associated carbohydrate antigens (TACAs). TACAs are exploited by tumor cells to suppress innate immune function, enable tissue invasion and metastasis, resist chemotherapy and promote a stem-cell phenotype. David serves as scientific head of Siamab’s immuno-oncology and antibody engineering programs, developing therapeutic antibodies targeting TACAs that have the potential to not only kill cancer cells but also re-engage the immune system and overcome chemoresistance. Prior to joining Siamab, David was a Scientist at Visterra Inc. where he played a key role in the development of clinical-stage broad-spectrum therapeutic antibodies for influenza and dengue. Previously, David obtained his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from MIT where he co-invented the ‘Nanocell’ tumor therapy delivery system, the platform technology behind the biotech startup Cerulean Pharma.

Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Dr. Matthew Eddy is a physical chemist who specializes in the investigation of the structure and conformational dynamics of membrane proteins, including G Protein-Coupled Receptors, using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Dr. Eddy received his Ph.D. from the the laboratory of Professor Robert Griffin at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his Ph.D., Eddy developed new methodologies for using NMR in the solid state to determine structures of membrane proteins in cellular-like environments. Following his PhD, Dr. Eddy joined the laboratories of Professors Raymond Stevens and Kurt Wüthrich at The Scripps Research Institute and University of Southern California as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow, applying an integrative structural biology approach to study human G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and focusing on applications of NMR to understand GPCR allosteric functions. Dr. Eddy has authored or coauthored over 25 peer-reviewed publications in high-profile scientific journals including Cell, JACS, and Structure. Dr. Eddy recently started his own laboratory at the University of Florida, developing new approaches to investigate GPCR structure-function relationships directly in cellular environments.

President & CEO
Gary Eldridge has been the President and CEO of Sequoia Sciences since its inception. He co-founded Sequoia in San Diego, CA in 1999 and currently leads Sequoia’s pharmaceutical R&D programs. Gary established strategic research collaborations with the Missouri Botanical Garden and Washington University, and has negotiated research collaborations and service agreements with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He co-developed and led the validation of the company's platform technologies. Gary is an author on thirty-five peer-reviewed scientific publications and inventor on fifteen issued patents. Gary received a BS in Chemistry from Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Senior Principal Scientist
Biography

Partner, Novo Seeds
Aleks Engel manages the $165m REPAIR Impact Fund focused on Anti-Infective Resistance. He is a Partner with Novo Holdings based in Copenhagen Denmark, where he started in September 2014. Prior to joining Novo Holdings, Aleks was Vice President of Global Business Development with Baxter International based in Illinois and Shanghai. Other previous employments include Pfizer Global Research and Development, Truven Health Analytics and McKinsey & Company (all U.S.A.). Aleks holds a PhD in Biochemical Engineering (1999) and a MSc in Chemical Engineering Practice (1995) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Principal Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry
In the past 20 years Istvan J Enyedy has been involved in new target evaluation, hit finding, and hit-to-lead optimization projects for several types of target classes using both ligand and structure-based methods. He is coauthor on more than 40 publications and 12 patents/applications. He received his PhD in 1998 at Catholic University of America, Washington DC, and did postdoctoral training in Dr. Shaomeng Wang’s group at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC. Between 2001 and 2008 he worked at Bayer Pharmaceuticals, West Haven CT and Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge MA. Since August 2008 he has been working at Biogen Idec, in Cambridge MA.

Co-Founder
Dr. Daniel A. Erlanson is the co-founder of Carmot Therapeutics, Inc. a small-molecule drug discovery company applying fragment-based approaches to a variety of therapeutic targets. Prior to Carmot, Dr. Erlanson spent a decade developing fragment-based drug discovery technologies at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, which he joined at the company's inception. Before Sunesis, he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with James A. Wells at Genentech. Dr. Erlanson earned his PhD in chemistry from Harvard University in the laboratory of Gregory L. Verdine and his BA in chemistry from Carleton College. As well as co-editing two books on fragment-based drug discovery, Dr. Erlanson is an inventor on more than a dozen issued patents and an author of more than forty scientific publications. He is also editor of Practical Fragments, a blog devoted to fragment-based drug discovery.

Senior Scientist, Department of Protein Science
Dr. Ernst received his PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Yale University and took post-Doctoral Studies in Neurobiology at the Stanford University Medical School. He is currently a Senior Scientist in the Protein Sciences division of the Genentech Research and Early Development organization. He has more than 16 years of experience supporting all stages of therapeutic development from target identification to clinical validation. He is an expert in biochemical assay development, protein-protein binding, structure function relationships and antibody production. He has worked with and lead both large and small molecule therapeutic discovery teams where his work has contributed meaningfully to the development of brain penetrant antibodies and the development antibodies targeting amyloid proteins treatment of neurodegenerative disease, anti-CD20 antibodies for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis and an FGF21 mimetic antibody for the treatment of type II diabetes. Most recently his research has focused on the interspecies translatability and stability of engineered variants of the antibody Fc-effector region.

Principal Scientist and Project leader Medicinal Chemistry
Karolina Ersmark received her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Uppsala University (Sweden) in 2005 where she studied the design and synthesis of malarial aspartic protease inhibitors with Professor Anders Hallberg. After postdoctoral research with Professor Stephen Hanessian at University of Montreal (Canada) in the field of aeruginosins and thrombin inhibitors, Dr. Ersmark joined Medivir (Sweden) in 2007 as a medicinal chemist, to work on drug discovery of small molecule protease inhibitors. She is currently Principal Scientist, leading one of Medivir’s discovery projects focusing on small molecules to selectively suppress regulatory T cells to improve responses to cancer immunotherapy.

Consultant
John Erve is from Chicago and received degrees in Chemistry (BS, MS) from the University of Chicago and earned a Ph.D in Toxicology at Oregon State University under the supervision of Dr. Donald Reed. Following postdoctoral work at Vanderbilt (1995-1999) he joined BD-Biosciences (Woburn, MA) as a Study Director. In 2002, he joined AstraZeneca (Sweden) where he was involved in characterizing reactive metabolites and their protein adducts in an effort to better understand the role of reactive intermediates in drug toxicity. In 2004 he joined Wyeth (Collegeville, PA) as a Principal Scientist responsible for metabolite identification. Following the merger with Pfizer in 2010, John joined Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research (Cambridge, MA) as a Lab Head in Analytical Sciences. John returned to the field of drug metabolism by joining Elan Pharmaceuticals (San Francisco, CA) in 2012 and after Elan was sold created Jerve Scientific Consulting focusing on helping small biotech companies in the Bay area with their drug discovery efforts. His research interests include mechanistic toxicology and using mass spectrometry to characterize metabolites and metabolic pathways.

Vice President and Head iScience, Oncology, IMED Biotech Unit
Steve is an oncology drug discovery expert with experience in both small molecule and biologics discovery and development. He has a deep knowledge of both targeted therapies and immuno-oncology agents, with more than two dozen drugs taken into the clinic and supported the approval of Avonex, Angiomax, Farydak, Keytruda, Lynparza and Tagrisso.
Steve joined AZ in 2013 as Head of Oncology iScience with responsibility for target selection, drug discovery and optimization and overseeing biology, pharmacology, DMPK and chemistry resources, a team of 300 staff. He is also the Site head of the AstraZeneca R&D Boston Biohub based in Waltham MA. Prior to AZ Steve was VP and Discovery Head for Oncology at Merck. During his tenure at Merck the group advanced 3 novel drugs into the clinic including the anti-PD1 antibody Pembrolizumab (Keytruda). Before that Steve spent 5years as Drug Discovery Head for Novartis Oncology in Cambridge, and in this role he led efforts that resulted in four INDs and supported the HDAC inhibitor Panobinostat (now Farydak) and 15 years at Biogen, forming and leading the Oncology research group there.
Steve obtained his PhD at the University of Leeds UK, and completed post-doctoral fellowships at Rutgers Medical School NJ and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now CR-UK) in London.

Digital Health Analyst and Chief Growth Officer
DrBonnie360’s mission is to create a digitally connected world of personalized care for autoimmune patients. Driven by personal and professional passion, she uses 21st Century technology to raise awareness about the invisible autoimmune epidemic and to build bridges across the abyss of slow diagnosis and disappointing treatment. Bonnie is an invited speaker for SXSW, Stanford Medicine X, Bio-IT, Data to Drugs to Diagnostics, StrataRx, Games for Health, the Center for Connected Health, the NY eCollaborative Digital Health Summit, the mHealth Summit, and Ideas LA. Her work is featured in Medium, The Doctor Weighs In, O’Reilly Strata, Greatist, and Forbes. DrBonnie360’s recent multimedia work spotlights, “The Invisible Epidemic of Autoimmune Disease,” “The Lonely Voices of Autoimmune Disease,” and “Bridging the Autoimmune Abyss Through New Discoveries.” If you are a forward-thinking entrepreneur in a big company or small, primed to take on the huge and growing unmet needs of the autoimmune market, let’s talk. I bring a broad and deep network of digital health and autoimmune connections, as well as experience as a healthcare provider, Wall Street financial analyst, and consultant to companies supporting digital medicine.

Professor, Medicinal Chemistry
David M. Ferguson is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, the Associate Director of the Center for Drug Design, and a graduate faculty member of several interdisciplinary programs across the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the application of chemistry to solve problems related to biomolecular structure, function, and activity, especially as it relates to drug design and discovery. His lab pioneered the development of structure-based models for opioid ligand design, described novel catalytic inhibitors of topoisomerase II for use in cancer treatments, and advanced the design of TLR7/8 immunostimulatory agents with cytokine specific attenuation in generating a robust immune response for the design of adjuvants.

Scientist, Biology
Dr. Ferreyra is a scientist at NGM Biopharmaceuticals where she manages two early stage drug discovery programs, including the microbiome discovery program as well as an antibody-based therapeutic program. Dr. Ferreyra received her BS with Honors in Biology from Duke University, followed by her PhD from Stanford University Department of Microbiology and Immunology, where she was awarded the Sidney Raffel Award. Prior to joining NGM, Dr. Ferreyra's work in Justin Sonnenburg's lab at Stanford focused on deciphering the contribution of the human microbiota to C. difficile infections, including novel target discovery and therapeutic approaches to treat C. difficile infections.

Professor, Department of Cell Biology
Dr. Finley graduated from Harvard College in 1980 and received his PhD from MIT in 1984, having worked with Alex Varshavsky and in collaboration with Aaron Ciechanover. His thesis work showed that the ubiquitin pathway is essential in mammals and is the major pathway for selective protein degradation. This work also linked ubiquitination to cell cycle control and the stress response. He continued at MIT for his post-doctoral work, and developed yeast as a model system for the study of ubiquitination. He was appointed in 1988 to the faculty at Harvard Medical School, where he remains today, mainly studying various aspects of proteasome function.

Therapeutic Area Head, Fibrosis
Biography

Chief Scientific Officer
Mick Foley is the founding scientist of AdAlta and a key inventor of the AdAlta i-body technology, which are libraries of human single domain proteins containing a long loop. Since 1995 he has been working on phage display of antibodies and peptides as a means of answering fundamental questions of immunity to infectious diseases, particularly malaria of which he is an internationally recognized leader. Recently he has been using phage display to identify single domain i-bodies against GPCRs and Ion channels.

Senior Scientist II, Research & Development
Dr. Peter Foote has 7 years of experience in the ubiquitin field. He earned his PhD at Northwestern University with Professor Alexander Statsyuk, focusing on E3 ligase chemical biology. At LifeSensors, his broad background has enabled him to lead a variety of assay development, HTS, and proteomics-based biomarker discovery projects.

Program Director, Integrative Medicine
Dr. Leigh Frame earned a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry with Distinction in the Major from Mary Baldwin College (now Mary Baldwin University) in Staunton, Virginia. Dr. Frame is a double graduate of the prestigious Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, where she earned a Master of Health Science in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and a Doctor of Philosophy in International Health: Human Nutrition. Dr. Frame has over a decade of experience in clinical research at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and School of Public Health—most of which at the Center for Bariatric Surgery. In her research, Dr. Frame brings nutrition and immunity together through clinical/translational research. She is especially interested in the role of vitamin D as an immune modulatory hormone particularly in skin, the primary site of vitamin D production and activation. Dr. Frame is also interested in the potential role of the skin microbiome in wound healing. Currently, Dr. Frame is the Program Director for the Integrative Medicine Program at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences. At George Washington, Dr. Frame is reestablishing her research and working to expand the Integrative Medicine Program, with emphasis on building the nutrition program.

Project Leader ¦ Antimicrobial Memory Recovery and Exploratory Programme (AMREP), Global Antibiotic R&D Partnership (GARDP)
François Franceschi is the Project Leader for the Antimicrobial Memory Recovery and Exploratory Programme (AMREP) at GARDP since April 2018. François has over 25 years of antimicrobial experience. Prior to working with GARDP, François served as Program Officer for Therapeutics Development (antibacterial and antifungal) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland, where he also served as NIAID’s liaison to CARB-X and as a member of its Scientific and Milestone Review Boards. From 2002 to 2012, he held various Director positions in Antibiotic R&D at Rib-X Pharmaceuticals (now Melinta Thearpeutics) in New Haven, Connecticut. From 1990 until 2002 François was Principal Investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Molekulare Genetik in Berlin, Germany, where his research was devoted to the structure and function of ribosomes, especially in complex with antibiotics. His group at the MPI was a pivotal part of an international consortium headed by Ada Yonath, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. François earned a PhD in Chemistry at the Frei Universität Berlin, and his undergraduate degree in Biology at Universidad Simon Bolívar in Venezuela.

Director, Research Beyond Borders- Regenerative Medicine Division
Director Boehringer Ingelheim, CT US- Regenerative Medicine with over 14 years pharmaceutical industry experience. Currently in charge of the global Regenerative Medicine strategy portfolio. Leading and managing multiple projects and collaborations worldwide targeting skeletal muscle, pancreas, liver and lung regeneration.

Assistant Professor of Surgery
Dr. Fuchs received his PhD in Biology from Saint Louis University examining the role of glutamine transporters in the metabolism of hepatocellular carcinoma. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Surgical Oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center studying the role of epidermal growth factor in the development of liver fibrosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School where his lab broadly focuses on the identification of the molecular pathways leading to liver fibrosis and the analysis of therapeutics to inhibit these processes. A major focus of his lab is examining the role of liver fibrosis as a pre-cancerous state and determining if anti-fibrotic therapies can prevent hepatocellular carcinoma development. Recent work has focused on the development of novel molecular imaging strategies to quantify collagen and lysyl oxidase-mediated collagen cross-linking as a non-invasive means to monitor fibrosis progression, predict disease outcomes, and analyze response to therapy. In addition, Dr. Fuchs has a long-standing interest in how molecular classification of hepatocellular carcinoma can predict response to therapy and improve the design of clinical trials.

Deputy Director of Edwin L. Steele Laboratory and Investigator, Massachusetts General Hospital, Associate Professor
Dai Fukumura, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor and the Deputy Director of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratories, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He is an internationally recognized expert in imaging, angiogenesis, vascular and tumor biology. Dr. Fukumura and his colleagues have developed various innovative intravital optical imaging techniques and sophisticated animal models – which more faithfully represent the clinical behavior of tumors – in collaboration with world-renowned experts. Dr. Fukumura’s research areas include 1) role of host-tumor interaction (microenvironment) in angiogenesis, tumor growth, metastasis and treatment response; 2) role of obesity in angiogenesis and tumor microenvironment, and progression, metastasis and treatment response; 3) role of nitric oxide in vessel formation, function, and normalization; 4) probing and exploiting tumor microenvironment using nanotechnology; and 5) tissue-engineered blood vessels. For more information, go to <http:>. </http:>

Programme Leader, The MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, The Sir James Black Centre
Ian Ganley is a Programme Leader in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit at The University of Dundee, Scotland. The Ganley Lab is interested in autophagy, a membrane-driven lysosomal degradation pathway, and how this might be targeted to treat disease. The lab is focussed on how signalling leads to mitophagy, the autophagy of mitochondria, and uses a combination of in vitro and in vivo approaches to determine when and where this process is important and how it is regulated.

Senior Scientist, Biology
Min Gao is a senior research fellow at Arbutus BioPharma, working on hepatitis B virus. Prior to this, Min was a research fellow at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). Min’s group was the first to successfully discover HCV NS5A replication complex inhibitor, Daclatavir. Min has received Ondetti & Cushman award in 2011 and Heroes of Chemistry award in 2017 for the discovery of Daclatasvir and development of combination therapy. Min received his Ph.D from Penn State University and completed his post-doctoral training at Harvard medical school.

Medicine Development Leader
Biography

Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Medicine
Evripidis (Evris) Gavathiotis, PhD is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and faculty member of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics, the Albert Einstein Cancer Center, the Institute for Aging Research, the Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the Wilf Family Cardiovascular Research Institute. His research focuses on novel mechanisms of protein interactions in cell death and cell survival signaling that cause cancer and other aging-associated diseases and the discovery and optimization of small molecule modulators with the aim to develop new therapeutics. Dr. Gavathiotis has co-authored over 50 scientific publications and 15 United States patent applications. Dr. Gavathiotis has received numerous honors and awards throughout his career including the NIH Pathway to Independence Award, Scholar Awards from the Gabrielle's Angel Foundation for Cancer Research, the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research and the Alexandrine and Alexander L. Sinsheimer Foundation. He received the 2014 Young Chemical Biologist Award by the International Chemical Biology Society and the 2015 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research. More recently he received the Collaborative Science Award from the American Heart Association, an Award from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award. Dr. Gavathiotis earned a NYC BioAccelerator Award for his entrepreneurial activities and is a scientific co-founder of two biotechnology companies. Dr. Gavathiotis trained at Rockefeller University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and was a junior faculty at Harvard Medical School. He received his PhD from the University of Nottingham.

Team Leader, Discovery Sciences
Davide Gianni currently leads the Cellular Assay Development team in Discovery Sciences (AZ) in Cambridge UK. The main focus of the team is to deliver the cellular assay portfolio for key therapeutic areas for AZ. He joined AZ in August 2015 from Boehringer-Ingelheim (Vienna) where he was in charge of leading a team of scientists to identify and validate drug target for oncology drug discovery. Davide got his PhD from University of Naples (Italy) and completed his postdoctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla before relocating to Europe. He has authored >20 peer-reviewed publications and review articles in high impact journals covering several scientific areas including cancer and molecular biology, neurodegeneration and drug discovery.

Assistant Professor, Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Dr. Gibbings obtained his BSc, Honors at McGill University in Microbiology and Immunology. He subsequently completed a PhD in Experimental Medicine at the University of Alberta focusing on innate immunity receptors in the lab of Dean Befus. In 2006, he joined the laboratory of Olivier Voinnet at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Strasbourg, France to study the biology of microRNA. In 2010, he moved with the laboratory of Olivier Voinnet to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH-Z). He has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at University of Ottawa since August 2012. Dr. Gibbings made groundbreaking discoveries on how microRNA complexes are transported extracellularly by exosomes. This discovery was patented and transformed into a clinically-used diagnostic test with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, a major RNA silencing therapeutics company. Dr. Gibbings was also one of the first researchers to draw attention to the importance of RNA degradation by autophagy, a process with important consequences in cancer and many neurodegenerative diseases.

Professor, Pharmacology
Dr. Gilchrist works on allosteric and/or biased modulators for a number of different GPCRs including PAR1, CCR1, and FFAR2. She also serves as an International Editor for the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. In addition to editing the book “GPCR Molecular Pharmacology and Drug Targeting: Shifting Paradigms and New Directions” published by John Wiley and Sons she has written chapters on G protein signaling and CCR1 antagonists.
Dr. Gilchrist recently served with Dr. Paula Stern as a guest editor for Frontiers in Endocrinology for a themed issue on “Chemokines and Bone”. She is an Associate Professor at Midwestern University. Previously, she was with Cue Biotech and Caden Biosciences, companies she co-founded that focused on GPCRs and used a novel approach to identify allosteric compounds based on their ability to modulate GPCR/G protein coupling (US Patent Numbers 7,208,279 and 7,294,472). Prior to that Dr. Gilchrist worked as an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology & Biological Chemistry at Northwestern University where she developed a set of unique tools known as minigene vectors (US Patent Number 6,559,128). Minigene vectors allow one to dissect out the G protein that mediates a given physiological function and they have been widely adopted by researchers around the world. Preceding that Dr. Gilchrist was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Heidi Hamm. In this setting, she identified high affinity peptides that mimic the C-terminus of Ga, and were later used for crystallization of rhodopsin. Dr. Gilchrist’s work on GPCRs began with her graduate studies in which she studied signaling of chemokine receptors through tyrosine kinases and phosphatases. Dr. Gilchrist has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Connecticut Health Center and a MS in Biochemistry from the University of Connecticut.

Senior Scientific Manager
Avinash Gill received his PhD in Biochemistry and Structural Biology from Dartmouth College and completed his post-doctoral research at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. In his previous roles, he has worked at ImmunoGen, Bio-Architecture Lab and Sutro Biopharma. His research interests include protein purification, biochemical assay development, protein engineering, affinity analysis, automated process development and bioinformatics. Currently he is Sr. Scientific Manager in the Antibody Engineering department at Genentech where he oversees efforts in automated high-throughput protein production, design and implementation of automated workflows, and software development for efficient process management. His research group focuses on developing and implementing automated high-throughput technologies for production and characterization of naturally derived and engineered antibodies, antibody fragments as well as other novel therapeutic formats.

Research Scientist, Institute of Engineering in Medicine
During his scientific career spanning over 30 years, Dr. Glinsky has held and continue to hold faculty positions at many high-visibility prestigious academic institutions, including the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, the Albany Medical College, the Stanford University, the Rockefeller University, the University of California San Diego. For more detailed description of Dr. Glinsky’s professional biography, please refer to: http://iem.ucsd.edu/people/profiles/guennadi-v-glinskii.html

Instructor in Medicine
Aaron Goldman is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School in the Division of Engineering in Medicine, and leads Research and Development at Mitra Biotech, a personalized cancer medicine company in Boston. His research is focused on understanding how cancer cells can escape cancer therapy. His group seeks to fully interrogate the entire tumor ecosystem, which encompasses tumor cells, the microenvironment around it, and even the role that normal cells contribute to the progression of cancer under drug pressure. Inspired by these biological mechanisms of resistance, Goldman’s lab employs engineering approaches that harness nanoscale technology to develop new drugs, which home into tumors and delivery combinations of small molecule compounds to ablate the origins of resistance.

Associate
Vikas joined SR One in January 2011, after interning with SR One since 2009. Prior to joining SR One, Vikas was a consultant at McKinsey and Co, a co-founder of Extera Partners, and a business development manager at Infinity Pharmaceuticals. Over his career, Vikas has supported business and corporate development activities for nearly 50 large and small public, venture-backed, and angel funded life science companies. Vikas received his BA in Neurobiology from Harvard University, and his MBA in Health Care Management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Nathanael Gray spent his childhood in Zambia, Yemen, India and Sudan before returning to the US to attend high school at Berkeley High in California. During his PhD at University of California at Berkeley, he discovered Purvalanol, one of the first selective inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases. After receiving the PhD in 1999, Dr. Gray moved to the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego, where he was named Director of Biological Chemistry in 2001. Dr. Gray’s research team was responsible for the development of several clinical candidates, including BAF312 which is currently undergoing Phase III clinical trials for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis. Dr. Gray joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2006 to continue his research using synthetic chemistry and functional small molecule discovery to modulate biological pathways important in cancer. His research group has been responsible for the discovery of novel inhibitors of wild-type and mutant forms of EGFR (WZ4002), mTor (Torin1 and Torin 2), Bcr-Abl (GNF-2, GNF-5, HG-7-85-01), Mps1 (Mps1-IN-1 Mps1-IN-2), Erk5 (XMD8-92), b-Raf, LRRK2 (LRRK2-IN-1), Jnk1,2,3 (JNK-IN-7) and Ephrin kinases which have become widely used research tools and have inspired several drug discovery programs.

Team Leader, Rapid Protein Production, Human Health Therapeutics Portfolio
Eric Grazzini obtained his Ph.D in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Pharmacology in 1996, studying the role of G protein-coupled receptors in steroids release from human and rat adrenal gland. After a post-doctoral fellowship at McGill University’s Royal Victoria Hospital, he served for 16 years within a major pharma company as a pharmacology project leader and manager. He has extensive experience in biologics and small molecule assay development and mechanistic analysis. He possesses deep expertise in the biology of GPCRs, ion channels, and transporters. In 2003, he received the AstraZeneca R&D Global Scientific and Technical Achievement Award for the de-orphanization of 6 orphan GPCRs that produced four new projects in two different therapeutic areas. Eric has authored over 25 publications appearing in Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Cell Biology, and PNAS. In 2014, he joined the NRC as Senior Research Officer and has since been appointed as Team Leader, Rapid Protein Production. His mission at NRC is to lead staff as well as R&D projects related to preclinical recombinant biologics production as well as collaborative research conducted with industrial, academic, and government partners.

Senior Manager, Head of Medicinal Chemistry II
PhD in organic chemistry from Univ. of Copenhagen in 1999. PostDoc at Tech. Univ. of Eindhoven, Holland in 2000. PostDoc at Univ. of Oxford, UK in 2001. Employed at Lundbeck in June 2001 as a scientist working with organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry. Moved to LEO Pharma in January 2007 as a senior scientist in medicinal chemistry. Headed up the topical JAK research project as a project leader 2009. From 2016 head of Medicinal Chemistry at LEO Pharma.

Director, Medicinal Chemistry
Biography

Professor, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of New Drug Research and Clinical Pharmacy
Dong Guo, PhD obtained his PhD degree from Leiden University, The Netherlands, in 2014. He then continued his career as a postdoc fellow at the same university within the K4DD (Kinetics for Drug Discovery) consortium, financially supported by Europe’s Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) program and major Pharma companies. After that he joined Xuzhou Medical University, China. Since 2016 he holds a full professorship at the same university. His main research interest is understanding and improving drug-receptor interactions, including the ‘translational’ concept receptor residence time.

Associate Director, Translational Medicine Group
Biography

Founder and CEO
Dr. Guzzo has over 20 years of experience leading interdisciplinary drug discovery and development teams in multiple therapeutic areas, including metabolic, CNS, and gastrointestinal diseases. He is the co-founder and CEO of ConSynance Therapeutics, Inc. an emerging clinical development company seeking treatments for serious unmet diseases. Previously, Dr. Guzzo was the Director of Drug Discovery at Albany Molecular Research, Inc. He received his doctorate in organic chemistry at the University of Notre Dame under the direction of Professor Marvin Miller. He also conducted post-doctoral studies in Professor Arthur Schultz’s laboratories at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before embarking on his industrial career.

Research and Development Manager
John has worked for BLIS Technologies since 2011 after studying with its founder, Professor John Tagg, in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He also carried out post-doctoral research at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the Monash University School of Pharmacy in Melbourne, Australia.

Vice President Clinical Development
Biography

Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Chief of Transplant Immunology
Wayne Hancock has more than 400 papers in PubMed, an H-index of 99, and constantly ponders the fine tuning of immune responses, especially with regard to modulation of Foxp3+ T-regulatory cells, but also with regard to effects on conventional T cells. Understanding the nuances of the regulation of key gene sets is likely to boost immune responses and promote durable anti-cancer immunity beyond the current ceiling of ~20% of tumors seen with anti-PD-1 or PD-L1 targeting. While much more needs to be done, there are already clues and data to show how such break-throughs can be achieved (and it won’t be by doing more of the same).

Principal Scientist, Biotherapeutics Discovery
I obtained my PhD from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Following a postdoctoral training in pre-clinical development of HIV-1 vaccine candidates and novel vaccine delivery platforms at Case Western Reserve University and Iowa State University, in 2014, I joined Boehringer Ingelheim, Ridgefield, CT. I am currently leading an immunogen design and immunization group. Also I lead projects in cancer immunology and immunomodulation, Immunology & Respiratory, and CardioMetabolic Diseases Research.

Assistant Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology
Diana Hargreaves is an Assistant Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and a member of the Salk Cancer Institute, where she is exploring how mutations in epigenetic regulators contribute to tumor initiation and progression. In particular, she is aiming to uncover how mutations in the SWI/SNF complex shape the tumor microenvironment and influence the response to immunotherapy. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Stanford School of Medicine under Dr. Gerald Crabtree. She received her PhD in immunology at Yale University under Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov. She is the recipient of the R00 Pathway to Independence Award and the V Foundation Scholar Award.

Research Investigator II, Mechanistic Biochemistry
Dr. Mary Harner is a Research Investigator within the Mechanistic Biochemistry group of Leads Discovery & Optimization at Bristol-Myers Squibb. With a broad training in biophysics and structural biology, Mary uses techniques such as NMR, SPR, TSA and fluorescence to perform fragment screening, hit assessment, and SAR support on relevant targets across multiple therapeutic areas. She also uses biophysical techniques for deeper mechanistic and structural understanding of ligand-binding events. Mary trained as a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University under the guidance of Stephen W. Fesik, utilizing NMR for fragment screening of challenging targets and X-ray crystallography to drive structure-based drug design efforts. As a graduate student at the University of North Carolina, she studied enzyme conformational dynamics using NMR, X-ray crystallography, and fluorescence methods under the direction of Andrew L. Lee.

Vice President, Antibody Discovery Services
Bill received his graduate training in immunology at UCSF and has held research director positions in biotech and pharma companies. His primary focus has been the invention, development, and use of new technology for antibody discovery. In 2008 Bill co-founded Crystal Bioscience and became its CSO with the goal of creating the most diverse and effective antibody repertoires possible from wild-type and transgenic animal systems.

Senior Scientist, Pattern Recognition Receptor DPU
Phil obtained his PhD at the university of Manchester, UK and subsequently completed a post-doc at the University of Florida. He has a 26 year career at GSK and legacy companies in medicinal chemistry drug discovery. During this time he has been involved in multiple kinase programs across a variety of therapeutic areas. He is a co-inventor of the VEGFR inhibitor Votrient® currently approved for the treatment of advanced kidney cancer and soft tissue sarcoma and received a Southeastern Regional ACS Award for Industrial Innovation. Phil was also a member of the drug discovery team that identified the b-RAF inhibitor Tafinlar®, currently approved for the treatment of advanced melanoma. Most recently Phil has led the RIP1 chemistry drug discovery team at GSK and is a co-inventor of the clinical lead GSK2982772 currently under Phase 2a evaluation in psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis patients.

Founder and CEO
Dr. Harwood is a former Principal Research Investigator at Pfizer. Currently, he is the Founder and Chief Consultant at Delphi BioMedical Consultants LLC, Adjunct Professor Department of Cell and Molecular Biology and Health Professions Advisory Committee Member at the University of Rhode Island, and Adjunct Professor Department of Pathology at Wake Forest University. Jim brings more than 30-year experience in drug R&D in pharmaceutical industry especially in physiology and pharmacology of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.

Principal Scientist, Department of Neuroscience, Movement Disorders and Translational Capabilities
Nate Hatcher earned his PhD in 2002 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology where he studied neuromodulation of simple neural circuits and behavior in invertebrate model systems under Dr. Rhanor Gillette and continued his training as a Postdoctoral fellow at the UIUC Neuroproteomics Center on Cell-Cell Signaling under the direction of Dr. Jonathan Sweedler. Nate began his career in drug development by joining Merck Research Laboratories in 2008 as a biochemist supporting assay development and biomarker discovery and has since assumed roles of increasing responsibility across Merck’s preclinical organization. Nate currently manages a mass spectrometry lab within the Department of Neuroscience, Movement Disorders and Translational Capabilities. His group employs discovery and targeted “omics” approaches, often in combination with flux analyses utilizing stable isotopically-labeled tracers, in drug discovery efforts targeting disorders of the central nervous system. Within the neuroscience disease area programs, his group provides analytical support for biomarker discovery and translation, cell and animal model development, assay development for cell-based compound screening, and early target discovery and validation studies.

CEO
John has over 15 years’ experience in building and leading biotech companies across discovery, development, financing and business development. He successfully managed several monoclonal, oligoclonal, and bispecific antibody products into clinical development, as well as managed and developed numerous collaborations with biopharmaceutical companies in the US, Europe, and Japan. Prior to joining F-star, John was VP Research, Biologics Products at ImClone Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company. Previously, he was a cofounder and Chief Scientific Officer of Symphogen A/S, a Danish biotechnology company developing therapeutic antibody combinations. John holds an MD from University of Aarhus, Denmark and a D.Phil. in Immunology from the Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, UK.

Associate Principal Scientist, Discovery Biology, Discovery Sciences, IMED Biotech Unit
Biography

CSO
Guy joined Isogenica as CSO in January 2016. He brings in over a decade of experience in antibody fragment discovery and early development, as well as antibody discovery technology development. At Isogenica, he leads the internal technology and product development, as well as drive scientific interactions with prospective or current licensees and other partners.

President and CEO
Dr. Jeffrey Herz, Ph.D, is the founder, President and CEO of Algomedix, with more than twenty-five years of drug development and management experience in biotechnology. His areas of expertise span discovery research, pharmaceutical product development and clinical trials. Dr. Herz established the TRPA1 drug development program for chronic pain and has led development efforts that have created a leading position for this potential first-in-class non-opioid analgesic. Prior to founding Algomedix, Dr. Herz was the founding scientist at Omeros and led discovery and pharmaceutical research programs in pain and inflammation which resulted in three products which progressed from to late-stage clinical trials and one FDA approved product. Dr. Herz received his PhD in Physiology and Anatomy from the University of California at Berkeley and held a NIH post-doctoral fellowship in the Dept. of Pharmacology of the University of California at San Diego Medical School. He subsequently served on the faculty at the Univ. of Texas at Austin before entering the biotechnology industry. He is author of numerous papers, inventor of more than 225 patents, and a speaker at numerous meetings.

Team Lead, MS & NMR Analytics
Jennifer Hill received a PhD from Harvard University in molecular signaling. She then joined Wyeth for a postdoctoral fellowship where she applied mass spectrometry technology to identify new therapeutic targets. In 2003, Jennifer joined the National Research Council Canada where her research explores the intersection of cancer biology and mass spectrometry methods. Jennifer currently acts as Project Lead for Target Prioritization and Team Lead for Mass Spectrometry & NMR Analytics.

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School Cancer Center and Center for Transplantation Sciences, Massachusetts General Hospital
Jonathan Hoggatt is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and holds appointments in both the Cancer Center and Center for Transplantation Sciences of Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also a principal faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an affiliate faculty member of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department at Harvard University where he teaches Immunology. Dr. Hoggatt is a recognized expert in stem cell biology and gene therapy, and his research endeavors have focused on translational science in bone marrow transplantation. These studies have resulted in licensed patents, several clinical trials and high profile papers. He has served as a scientific consultant for numerous companies regarding stem cell therapies and is a Scientific Co-Founder of Magenta Therapeutics.

Scientific Leader, Protein, Cellular and Structural Sciences
Drug Hunter with industry experience in drug design, structural biology, chemical biology, cell engineering, and pharmacology. Marc currently leads a group at GlaxoSmithKline in Platform Technology focused on exploring advanced protein engineering, high throughput cellular target engagement, and developing novel hit ID strategies to support GSK’s discovery portfolio.

Scientific Director, Discovery Pharmacology
Dr. Liaoyuan Hu is currently the Scientific Director, Head of Pharmacology at Amgen Asia R&D Center. He is leading the effort to build technology platforms focused on GPCR, to support GPCR antibody discovery, structure and drug discovery. Before joining Amgen, Liaoyuan worked at Eli Lilly and Lexicon Pharmaceutics as Principal Scientists, responsible for target validation, compound screening and SAR support of lead optimization for drug discovery programs in various disease areas. Liaoyuan earned hid Ph.D degree in Cellular Physiology and Molecular Biophysics from University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and his postdoctoral training on GPCR signaling transduction at Duke University in Dr. Lefkowitz’s lab.

Independent Consultant, United Kingdom
Catherine has spent over 21 years acquiring significant depth of experience in antibody drug discovery and platform applications, working for cutting edge biotech and pharma companies, such as Cambridge Antibody Technology (now MedImmune) and Heptares Therapeutics where she attained proof-of-concept studies to support efforts in GPCR antibody discovery. In 2015, Catherine reverted to providing independent scientific and strategic consultancy to biotechnology companies where her current assignments include GPCRs, ion channels, platform positioning and target evaluation. Catherine graduated with BSc Hons in Genetics and Cell Biology from University of Manchester, UK, and a PhD in Biochemistry and Applied Molecular Biology from UMIST, UK.

Presidential Endowed Chair in Health, Science and Engineering, Professor of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering
Wonpil Im received in bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Hanyang University in Seoul. He then earned his PhD in Biochemistry from Cornell University. He did his post-doctoral research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. In 2005, he was hired as an assistant professor in the Center for Computational Biology and Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. In 2011, he was promoted to associate professor and then professor in 2015. In 2016, he joined the Faculty in Departments of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at Lehigh University, and he has been named the Presidential Endowed Chair in Health - Science and Engineering. Wonpil was recently awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation and was named a KIAS Scholar from the Korea Institute for Advanced Study. Prior to Lehigh, he was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2007), ACS HP Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (2011), J. Michael Young Undergrad Advisor Award (2011), Meredith Docking Scholar (2013), and University Scholarly Achievement Award (2015).

Director, Assay Development and Screening Technologies
Dr. Inglese currently heads a laboratory focused on the development of assay and screening technology targeting rare and neglected disease within the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and is an Adjunct Investigator of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Prior to the formation of NCATS he co-founded the NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) acting as its Deputy Director. Dr. Inglese received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University and was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Robert J. Lefkowitz at Duke University Medical Center. Before coming to the NIH, Dr. Inglese led research teams at the Princeton-based biotech Pharmacopeia and Merck Research Laboratories. Over the past two decades, Dr. Inglese has contributed to over 180 publications and patents; his efforts on the early drug discovery process have resulted in novel assay formats and high throughput screening paradigms. Dr. Inglese is the Founding Editor of the journal, ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies and serves on the scientific advisory boards of several NIH-funded chemistry and screening centers and international chemical biology consortia.

Senior Research Associate, Structural Biology
Andrii Ishchenko has completed his PhD training at The Research Center Juelich in Germany studying structural biology of bacterial retinal proteins and a postdoc at The Scripps Research Institute studying structures of G protein-coupled receptors using free-electron lasers in the labs of Vadim Cherezov and Ray Stevens. Currently, he manages Structural Biology Core Facility at The University of Southern California, where he is responsible for membrane protein-related projects.

Principal Scientist (Bacteriology)
Ram Iyer is a Principal Scientist in the Bioscience department at Entasis Therapeutics, a biotech focused on the discovery & development of novel antibiotics to treat serious Gram-negative infections. Ram holds a PhD in Biology from the University of Houston, where he studied the channel properties of E. coli porins using patch-clamp electrophysiology. His post-doctoral training was on prokaryotic inner membrane transporters and bacterial pathogenesis first at HHMI, Brandeis University (Waltham, MA) and then at Tufts University School of Medicine (Boston, MA). Ram has a decade of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Entasis, Ram worked at Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc (Boston, MA) where he established systems to quantify compound entry and efflux in Gram-negative bacteria and developed genetic tools to address small molecule mechanisms-of-action (MoA) questions. At Entasis, Ram serves as the Strategic Early Exploration and Development team lead. His current interests include outer membrane porins, efflux pumps and the conception of strategies to delineate structure-porin permeation relationships.

Director, Antibody Discovery
Shelley Izquierdo, Director of Antibody Discovery at Ligand Pharmaceuticals, received her PhD from UC Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology. Her career has focused on the development and implementation of new technologies for interrogating B cell populations. At Crystal Bioscience she developed the GEM assay for recovering antibodies from immunized chickens, including the OmniChicken™. Shelley now oversees partner programs that require antibodies against difficult targets that are high homology in mammals.

Molecular Genetics and Microbial Genomics
Scott Jackson joined NIST in May of 2014 after 11 years as a principal investigator with the FDA. At FDA, his research focused on characterizing the global genomic diversity of enteric pathogens, with applications for food safety, bioforensics and public health. At NIST, Scott is currently the leader of the Complex Microbial Systems Group in the Biosystems and Biomaterials Division. In this current role, Scott is leading efforts to improve microbiome and metagenomic measurements by organizing inter-lab studies, developing reference materials and reference methods, and developing in vitro tools that allow us to better understand microbial community resilience and evolution. Scott completed his PhD research in the biochemistry and biophysics departments at The University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, respectfully, where he focused on the evolution of mobile genetic elements using yeast as a model genetic organism. Scott performed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry and Geology at the University of South Carolina.

Member of the Firm, Health Care and Life Sciences Practice
GAIL H. JAVITT is a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the Washington, DC, office of Epstein Becker Green. Ms. Javitt provides strategic FDA regulatory advice for leading medical device, diagnostics, pharmaceutical, biological products, human cellular, and tissue-based products (HCT/Ps), and dietary supplement companies throughout the product life cycle and has successfully resolved disputes at both the pre- and post-market stage. She also has significant experience advising clinical laboratories on FDA and CLIA requirements for laboratory developed tests.

Ms. Javitt’s experience prior to joining Epstein Becker Green includes serving as counsel in a major Washington, DC, FDA Regulatory practice and as a law and policy director at the Genetics and Public Policy Center, part of Johns Hopkins University. At the Center, she was responsible for developing policy options to guide the development and use of reproductive and other genetic technologies. Earlier in her legal career, Ms. Javitt clerked for the Honorable Gary Taylor of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

In addition, Ms. Javitt has published and spoken widely on issues at the intersection of law and science, including FDA regulation of genetic testing, precision medicine, and next-generation sequencing. Her academic experience has included serving as a faculty member at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University and as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, American University’s Washington College of Law, and the University of Maryland School of Law. She was previously a Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy, a collaborative effort between Johns Hopkins University and Georgetown University.

Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
Steve Jean has obtained his PhD studying cellular aspects of X. laevis development at Laval University. He then went to UCSD for his postdoctoral fellowship where he studied molecular mechanisms of endocytic recycling in D. melanogaster. From these studies, he found a coordination mechanism between endosomal sorting and autophagy. He is now an assistant professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, where he studies the coordination of trafficking events with autophagy, both in Drosophila and in colorectal cancer.

Staff Scientist, Signaling Systems Section, Laboratory of Immune System Biology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
I am a Staff Scientist in the Signaling Systems Section of the Laboratory of Immune System Biology at NIAID/NIH. I received my PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, and conducted postdoctoral research in host-pathogen interactions at Harvard Medical School and the Ragon Institute of MGH, Harvard and MIT. I currently study regulation of innate immune inflammatory pathways in macrophage cells.

Principal Scientist
Henry W. B. Johnson is a Principal Scientist at Kezar Life Sciences, a startup focused on developing innovative new therapies targeting protein homeostasis. Prior to joining Kezar he was a senior member of the medicinal chemistry team at Onyx Pharmaceuticals and Exelixis. Over the course of his career he has led several project teams which has culminated in five small molecules entering clinical development. Dr. Johnson is an author on more than 50 scientific publications and patents.

Vice President, Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Lyn Jones completed PhD studies in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Nottingham, before starting his post-doctorate research at The Scripps Research Institute, California in the area of chemical biology. In 2001, he joined Pfizer in Sandwich, UK as a medicinal chemistry team leader, and in 2009, he won the inaugural Royal Society of Chemistry Young Industrialist of the Year Award for his contributions to HIV and COPD research and clinical candidate delivery. In 2011, he transferred to Cambridge, MA to become head of Rare Disease Chemistry and to lead the Chemical Biology Group. In 2017, he joined Jnana Therapeutics in Boston (VP, Chemical Biology). He is an author or inventor on over 100 publications and patents, a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), and he is an elected member of the Chemistry Biology Interface Division Council of the RSC.

Vice President, Translational Science
Diane Joseph-McCarthy is Vice President of Translational Science at EnBiotix, with over 20 years of drug discovery and leadership experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector. Before joining EnBiotix, she was an Associate Director in the Infection Innovative Medicines Unit at AstraZeneca, where she led an innovative group of scientists with impact across the discovery value chain. In this role, she led a global team as part of a key capability build in Predictive Science. Prior to that she was at Wyeth where she held positions of increasing responsibility. She has been actively involved in the discovery of several compounds that have reached clinical trials. Dr. Joseph-McCarthy received her PhD from MIT and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. She has more than 70 publications/patents and has given numerous invited talks. She also has served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Polio Antiviral Advisory Committee.

Instructor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Senior Research Fellow, Laboratory for Lipid Medicine and Technology (LLMT), Massachusetts General Hospital
Kanakaraju Kaliannan, MD, is a Senior Research Fellow currently working in the Laboratory for Lipid Medicine and Technology (LLMT) in Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) / Harvard Medical School in the USA. He completed his Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Laboratory of Gastrointestinal Epithelialogy at MGH. During his fellowship, Dr. Kaliannan discovered a novel microbiome-based strategy to prevent and treat high-fat, diet-induced metabolic syndrome (MetS) in mice, resulted in a first author publication in the PNAS journal and crucial to winning the grants and awards of $350,000. In the LLMT, his combined use of multi-omics technologies with novel transgenic mouse models has demonstrated critical links between the omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid imbalance and chronic disease, and has discovered microbiome-derived biomarkers for disease assessment. To date, he has published more than 10 scientific papers in high‐impact scientific journals including PNAS and mBio. He has been invited to speak at international meetings such as ISSFAL congress 2014, WCI 2015, ICOH 2016 and ISOR 2017. He received ‘Posters of Distinction' and 'Posters of excellence' awards. He is serving as a reviewer for journals such as Digestive Disease Science, Medical Hypothesis and Journal of Nutrition and lead guest editor for Mediators of Inflammation journal.

Senior Scientist, Infectious Diseases
Sharookh Kapadia is a Sr. Scientist and Project Team leader in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Genentech. While at Genentech, Sharookh has been overseeing multiple antibacterial and antiviral drug discovery projects using both biologic and small molecule approaches. Prior to Genentech, Sharookh was a Scientist in the Biology department at Gilead Sciences in Foster City, CA. Prior to working at Gilead Sciences, Dr. Kapadia completed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Francis V. Chisari at The Scripps Research Institute where he played a key role in establishing the first infectious HCV cell culture system and uncovered a novel requirement for lipid metabolism in HCV replication and infectivity. Dr. Kapadia received his PhD in Immunology from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

Anatomy and Structural Biology
George S. Karagiannis received his degree in Veterinary Medicine from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, and his PhD from University of Toronto in Canada. He is currently investigating the prometastatic mechanisms of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, under the mentorship of Dr. John Condeelis and Dr. Maja Oktay, using intravital imaging and advanced microscopy.

Vice President, Quantitative Biology
Paul joined FLX Bio in 2016, bringing more than 15 years of experience building and leading high performance technical groups in various biopharmaceutical organizations. Paul was previously Director of Research and Head of the Genome Analysis Unit at Amgen, Inc. During his eleven years at Amgen, he developed and implemented multiple high-throughput platforms for drug discovery and target identification across a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas. Prior to Amgen, Paul held scientific and leadership positions in several smaller companies which enabled him to exercise his passion for creating novel technology platforms to enable drug discovery. Paul received his BS in Genetics and Development from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana before performing graduate research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and earning his PhD in Immunology from Harvard University. Paul completed postdoctoral work in Cellular Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego.

Professor, Medicine, Division of Regenerative Medicine; Director, Cell Therapy Program
Dr. Kaufman is a Professor in Department of Medicine, Division of Regenerative Medicine and Director of the Cell Therapy program at the University of California- San Diego. Dr. Kaufman does clinical work in hematology/BMT. His research focuses on use of human pluripotent stem cells to study development of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, lymphocytes, and other mesodermal lineages. His studies have developed efficient means to produce natural killer cells from human ES cells and iPSCs suitable for new clinical applications to treat relapsed/refractory cancers- both hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. Current studies aim to translate use of these cells into clinical therapies and to engineer these NK cells with novel receptors to improve killing of cancer cells.

CEO
Leen Kawas, CEO of M3 Biotechnology, has led the business and financial growth of M3 from early proof-of-concept stage to the clinic. Leen has recently been nominated as co-chair of the Alzheimer’s Association Business Consortium (February 2018), recognized as a PharmaVoice 100 winner (August 2017) and a 40 & under CEO leading the Future of Pharma Innovation from Life Science Leader (July 2017). She’s also won many additional awards and recognitions including Entrepreneur of the Year and one of Seattle’s Most Influential People. Leen serves on multiple boards, including the Washington Governor’s Life Science Advisory Board, the Scientific Review Board for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and the Alzheimer’s Association-Washington local Chapter Board.She earned a doctorate in molecular pharmacology from Washington State University, and received the Harriett B. Rigas and Karen DePauw awards for academic achievement and leadership skills. She holds a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD.) from the University of Jordan. Leen also completed the Executive Business Training Program at the Foster School ofBusiness, University of Washington.

Professor, Department of Pharmacology
Beginning his career as a synthetic chemist, Terry Kenakin received a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Alberta in Canada. After a post-doctoral fellowship at University College London, U.K., he joined Burroughs-Wellcome as an associate scientist (7 yrs). From there, he continued working in drug discovery for 25 years first at Glaxo Inc., then GlaxoWellcome and finally as a Director at GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development laboratories at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. Dr. Kenakin is now a professor in the Department of Pharmacology, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill. Currently he is engaged in studies aimed at the optimal design of drug activity assays systems, the discovery and testing of allosteric molecules for therapeutic application and the quantitative modeling of drug effects. In addition, he is Director of the Pharmacology graduate courses at the UNC School of Medicine. He is a member of numerous editorial boards as well as editor in Chief of the Journal of Receptors and Signal Transduction. He has authored numerous articles and has written 10 books on Pharmacology.

President
John Kenney is a Founder and President of Antibody Solutions, a contract research organization specializing in therapeutic antibody discovery and development. His current research interests include new technologies for improving therapeutic antibody discovery, properties of next-generation antibody-like molecules, and best practices for critical reagents used in biologics development.

In Vivo Pharmacology Function Lead
PhD in Genetics and Biochemistry from Rockefeller University. Postdoctoral training at UCSF in Developmental Biology, Cell Signaling and Cell Therapy Drug Delivery. Joined Nektar Therapeutics in 2016. Currently Head of In Vivo Pharmacology at Nektar Therapeutics, San Francisco.

Vice President, Business Development & Scientific Strategy
Dr Daniel Klamer, Vice President of Business Development and Scientific Strategy of Anavex, has more than 15 years of experience in neuroscience and the orphan disease space, with acquisition, partnering and R&D experience in Europe and the USA. Prior to Anavex he worked at Retrophin and Neurosearch Sweden. At Neurosearch Sweden, Dr Klamer led and evaluated multiple discovery-phase neuropharmacological research products with an emphasis on strategic evaluation of preclinical and clinical development. Dr. Klamer earned his PhD in Pharmacology at The Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, his MBA at Fordham Gabelli School of Business, and his Post-Doctoral training at the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Klamer holds a position as an Associate Professor at the Department of Pharmacology at The Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg.

Vice President, Research & Development
Dr. Klingemann has served as the company’s Vice President of Research & Development since joining full time in 2012. He is also the discoverer of the NK-92 cell line and co-founder of the company. Dr. Klingemann received his MD from the University of Würzburg Medical School, and his PhD from the University of Marburg, Germany. He received specialty training in Stem Cell Transplantation under Nobel Laureate Dr. ED. Thomas at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Prior to joining NantKwest, Dr. Klingemann served as the Director of the Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Program and the Director for Hematological Malignancies at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Dr. Klingemann also served as Director of the Section of Bone Marrow Transplant & Cell Therapy at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago where he established the first clinical GMP Cell Therapy facility in the Chicago area. Over the past 25 years, Dr. Klingemann has conducted National Cancer Institute supported research on how to engineer the patient’s immune system to fight cancer, resulting in over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He is author and editor of several books on stem cell transplantation. Dr. Klingemann has been selected as Boston’s Top Doctor for the several years and was named by US News and World Report as one of the leading oncologists in the country. He maintains an academic appointment at Tufts University Medical School.

Research Program Head, Affimed GmbH; Professor
Prof. Dr. Joachim Koch joined Affimed as Research Program Head in 2016. He is responsible for managing the Company’s joint projects with academic and industrial partners, focusing on the development of novel immune cell engagers and NK cell-based therapeutics. Prior to Affimed, Joachim led the Immunobiology of Natural Killer Cells group, a research group focusing on NK cell tumor immunosurveillance, at the Institute of Tumor Biology and Experimental Therapy (Georg-Speyer-Haus), Frankfurt a. M., and University of Mainz Medical Center. A biologist trained at University of Cologne and Harvard Medical School, Joachim holds a PhD from the University of Heidelberg. Following his Habilitation on viral immune evasion from MHC class I antigen presentation at Goethe-University Frankfurt and at LUMC Leiden, Joachim was granted a Professorship in Biochemistry at Goethe-University Frankfurt.

Chairman and Chief Scientist
Dr. Grant A. Krafft, PhD Co-Founded Acumen Pharmaceuticals Inc. in 1996, and serves as its Chairman and Chief Scientific Advisor. Dr. Krafft is responsible for Acumen's research and development programs and scientific strategies, and he is the author and co-inventor of Acumen's patent portfolio. He served as Chief Scientific Officer of Acumen Pharmaceuticals Inc. Prior to Acumen, he held the position of Research Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry at Northwestern University Medical School, where he and his research colleagues discovered Amyloid-bDerived Diffusible Ligands (ADDLs). While at Northwestern, he also served as Director of Research Development for the ENH Research Institute, a Northwestern University Medical School affiliate. Dr. Krafft served as Chief Technical Officer of Tibotec-Virco, a Belgium-based HIV therapeutics and pharmacogenomics company acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2002 for $350M. He was also scientific Volwiler Fellow at Abbott Laboratories where he also held scientific management positions in its Diagnostics and Pharmaceutical Products Divisions. Dr. Krafft began his professional career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Syracuse University where he was a Faculty Fellow of the American Cancer Society. Dr. Krafft is an author on more than 75 scientific papers and a co-inventor on more than 20 issued and pending patents. He has been the principal investigator on more than a dozen NIH, NSF, ACS and Alzheimer's Association Grants and received an Alzheimer's Association T.L.L. Temple Award in 1999. Dr. Krafft obtained his BS degree with highest distinction and special honors in Chemistry at Valparaiso University, and a PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He also was an NIH post-doctoral fellow in the Chemistry Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

CEO
Biography

CEO
Arthur M. Krieg, MD has worked in the oligonucleotide field since the 1980s. Most recently he founded Checkmate Pharmaceuticals to develop novel oligonucleotides for cancer immunotherapy. Prior to that role Art was CSO at Sarepta until July 2014; co-founder and CEO at RaNA Therapeutics from 2011 to 2013; CSO of Pfizer’s Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Unit from 2008 to 2011; and co-founder, CSO of Coley Pharmaceutical Group from 1997 until its acquisition and incorporation into Pfizer in 2008. Art discovered the immune stimulatory CpG DNA motif in 1994, which led to a new approach to immunotherapy and vaccine adjuvants. Based on this technology he co-founded Coley Pharmaceutical Group in 1997, discovering and taking 4 novel oligonucleotides into clinical development. Art co-founded the first antisense journal, Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, which he edited for 16 years, and the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society, for which he is currently serving as President for the 2017-2018 term. He is a Professor in the University of Massachusetts RNA Therapeutics Institute and he serves on the scientific advisory boards of several companies developing oligonucleotide therapeutics.
Art graduated from Haverford College in 1979, received his MD from Washington University in 1983, and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota in 1986. He was a Staff Fellow at the NIH in the Arthritis Institute from 1986 to 1991, when he joined the University of Iowa, becoming Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology. He has had 19 years of patient care experience, although his focus has always been on basic research and teaching. Art left academia and joined Coley full-time in 2001. He has published more than 250 scientific papers and is an inventor on 48 issued US patents covering oligonucleotide technologies.

Associate Professor, Chemistry
Joshua Kritzer, in addition to his affiliation above, is a member of the Molecular Microbiology Program and the Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology Program at Tufts University’s Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences. He is also a founding member of a privately-funded consortium, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Convergence Laboratory, that works on problems that require the convergence of multiple fields of science. The Kritzer lab uses techniques from across chemistry, biophysics, genetics and cell biology to develop new classes of cellular probes. Dr. Kritzer has been recognized with a Smith Family Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research, and an NIH New Innovator Award.

Senior Director, Research and Development
Dr. Suresh Kumar is a cell biologist and biochemist with several years of specific expertise in ubiquitin research. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Serge Fuchs, a pioneer ubiquitin scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied the role of ubiquitin in regulating key cytokine receptors. He discovered that the E3 ubiquitin ligase SCFβ-TrCP degrades the IFNalpha receptor, reducing the efficacy of IFNalpha in treating malignant melanoma. Dr. Kumar was also instrumental in establishing the roles of kinases in ubiquitin pathway mechanisms. In addition, he has contributed to the fields of immunology and antiviral therapeutics. In his current role as Senior Director of R&D at Progenra, Dr. Kumar has responsibilities in lead discovery and lead optimization. A major focus of Dr. Kumar is the development of small molecule immune-oncology drugs targeting the ubiquitin pathway enzymes.

Chief Scientific Officer
Jeffery Kutok, MD, PhD serves as Infinity’s Chief Scientific Officer. Prior to joining Infinity in 2010, Dr. Kutok was an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His laboratory focused on translational medicine research and biomarker identification in cancer, and he is an author on over 190 journal articles, reviews and book chapters. Dr. Kutok is board certified in Anatomic Pathology and Hematology and had clinical duties in Hematopathology and Molecular Diagnostics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Kutok received his BS in Biology and his MD, PhD in Medicine and Molecular Pathology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His PhD was earned working in the laboratory of Dr. Barry Coller, MD in the field of platelet pathobiology. He was also a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University in the laboratory of Dr. Gary Gilliland, MD, PhD

Head, Business Development & Licensing, Technology Platforms
Shiv Krishnan leads Business Development & Licensing for Technology Platforms in Sanofi. In this capacity, he leads a global team that deals with the entire value chain of Biologics for research, development and manufacturing, Drug Discovery and Translational Technologies. After graduating with a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Compiegne, France, Shiv spent the early part of his career in France working as a scientist in biotech at Transgene S.A, and then in the vaccine business at Sanofi Pasteur. He went on to work at Rhone Poulenc Rorer-Gencell until the creation of Aventis at which point he transferred to the United States. Shiv has been active in developing alliances with academia and biotech for the past 15 years covering the entire partnering value chain.

Team Leader, RNAi Screening, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
Madhu Lal-Nag currently serves as the head of the Trans NIH RNAi Facility at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) which is responsible for developing and conducting genome wide physiologically relevant phenotypic assays for Intramural researchers. Madhu joined NCATS in 2013, where she worked as a research scientist primarily to develop an assay platform of 3 Dimensional physiologically relevant, multi-cell-type disease models that are amenable to high-throughput screening. Prior to joining NCATS, she completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute on Aging. Her PhD is from the George Washington University in Molecular and Cellular Oncology. She has extensive experience in the miniaturization and optimization of physiologically relevant cell-based 2D and 3D assays to make them amenable for the screening of high-impact small molecule and functional genomics libraries with the goal of identifying unique receptor/ligand interaction and efficacy in various disease pathologies especially as they relate to the epigenetic modulation of cancer and stem cell biology.

Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Mariana Lemos-Duarte, working with Dr. Lakshmi Devi at the Department of Pharmacological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is investigating the role of protein kinases in modulating desensitization by G protein coupled receptors and identifying small molecule ligands targeting orphan G protein coupled receptors. Dr. Lemos-Duarte holds a bachelor's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Rio de Janeiro Federal University and master's degree in Cell Biology from the National Cancer Institute in Brazil and a PhD degree from the Institute of Chemistry at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Dr. Lemos-Duarte obtained part of her postdoctoral training at the Small Molecule Discovery Lab with Dr. Andrew Shiau at the Ludwig Cancer Institute, San Diego, CA. Throughout her career, she has been interested in developing new therapeutic strategies for treatment of cancer.

CEO
Dr. Immanuel Lerner is Pepticom's CEO since 2014, co-founder and board member. Dr. Lerner is a trained biologist, holds MSc in biochemistry with distinction and earned a PhD followed by postdoctoral from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, during his studies he published his research in leading journals. Dr. Lerner was responsible for the establishment of pepticom's biological R&D and led Pepticom from a "garage" start-up to a revenue generating company.

University Distinguished Professor, Biology; Director of Antimicrobial Discovery Center, Biology
Dr. Lewis is a specialist in multi-drug resistance and drug discovery. He is University Distinguished Professor of Biology and Director of Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University.

Seymour I. Schwartz Professor, Chairman, Surgery
Dr. Linehan graduated from the University of Massachusetts Medical School then completed his internship and residency at Deaconess-Harvard Surgical Service. He was chief resident in Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He completed a research fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital and was then the Kristin Ann Carr Fellow in Surgical Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
A cancer surgeon, Dr. Linehan specializes in treating cancers of the liver, pancreas, and gastric and biliary tract. At Washington University, he was recognized for bringing novel and innovative therapies to patients with hard-to-treat cancers. He also brought a compassionate, patient-centered approach to a high-volume surgical oncology practice. Dr. Linehan also treats benign surgical conditions of the liver, pancreas, gallbladder and bile ducts.
Dr. Linehan is an internationally renowned researcher, with more than 85 publications. His primary area of research is finding new ways to attack the biology of pancreatic tumors, such as through drug and genetic therapies.

Senior Scientist, Foundational Immunology
Biography

CSO
Dr. Liu has served as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Protagonist Therapeutics since May 2013 and has served as CSO and Head of Research and Development since February 2016. Prior to Protagonist, Dr. Liu was the Chief Operating Officer and a co-founder of Trenovus, Inc., from 2010 to 2012. Prior to Trenovus, Dr. Liu was Vice President of Research at FibroGen Inc., from 2002 to 2010. Prior to Fibrogen, Dr. Liu served as Director of Inflammation Research at Scios, Inc., now part of Johnson & Johnson, from 1992 to 2002. Dr. Liu held a position as an academic researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and was Instructor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, from 1976 to 1986. Dr. Liu received his PhD in microbiology and immunology from Michigan State University, and his BS in chemistry from The University of Chicago.

Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Scott Lokey received his PhD at the University of Texas, Austin in organic chemistry, where his research centered on the synthesis of molecules that fold into protein-like shapes in water and bind to specific DNA sequences. He did post-doctoral research at Genentech, where he worked on the synthesis of bioactive cyclic peptides, and then at Harvard Medical School on the synthesis of molecules designed to disrupt cellular processes related to motility. He joined the faculty at UCSC in 2002 in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where his research group focuses on the relationship between molecular structure and drug-like properties, especially cell permeability. Professor Lokey is also the director of the UCSC Chemical Screening Center, a high-throughput screening facility dedicated to early stage lead discovery, especially against infectious agents and neglected disease targets.

Principal Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry
Ulrich Lücking is a Principal Scientist at Bayer AG in Berlin. He started his industrial career at the former Schering AG in 2001, working across multiple therapeutic areas, mainly in lead optimization, to successfully deliver multiple clinical candidates.
His efforts were instrumental in the discovery of clinical candidates in the CDK inhibitor projects, the Androgen Receptor Suppressor project, the PTEFb inhibitor projects and the ATR Inhibitor project. Prior to joining industry, he studied chemistry at the University of Hannover (Germany). As an Erasmus student and later for his diploma work, he spent time in the laboratory of Prof. Steven V. Ley at Cambridge University (UK). In 1999 he completed his PhD under the direction of Prof. Andreas Pfaltz at the Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr (Germany), and then carried out postdoctoral work in the laboratories of Prof. Julius Rebek at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla (USA).

Assistant Professor
Dr. Angela Mabb is currently Assistant Professor at the Neuroscience Institute and Center for Behavioral Neurosciences at Georgia State University. Her scientific background and interests have strongly emphasized studying ubiquitin-like modifications in multiple systems, including cancer cells and neurons. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she focused on how posttranslational modifications such as protein SUMOylation contributed to pathways of chemoresistance in response to topoisomerase inhibitors. Her switch to the field of neuroscience dovetailed well with her graduate work, as she utilized her biochemical acumen to explore pathways of synaptic transmission and receptor trafficking in the nervous system at Duke University under the direction of Dr. Michael D. Ehlers. Here, she investigated how a group of enzymes called E3 ubiquitin ligases mediate synaptic transmission and plasticity in the nervous system. Her findings allowed a solution to a long-standing problem in the field of neuroscience: How can one temporally tune synaptic plasticity/transmission during elevated bouts of synaptic drive? She then migrated to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill under the direction of Dr. Benjamin D. Philpot and Dr. Mark J. Zylka. Here she focused on understanding pathways involved in brain-specific epigenetic regulation, with a particular focus on the epigenetically imprinted E3 ubiquitin ligase, UBE3A, a gene whose dysfunction has been linked to autism, Angelman syndrome, and cervical cancer.

Professor of Cancer Biology and Complex Diseases, College of Human Medicine
Jeff MacKeigan is a Professor of Cancer Biology and Complex Diseases in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado and his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina Comprehensive Cancer Center. His postdoctoral research in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School was immediately followed by a position at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. Dr. MacKeigan next joined the faculty at the Van Andel Research Institute, and most recently joined Michigan State University as a Professor of Cancer Biology. The MacKeigan lab seeks a systems level understanding of complex signaling networks and pathways, which play key roles in cancer. Their research involves a variety of cutting-edge technologies, combining their tumor biology expertise and pathway knowledge to study other complex diseases. All of the research projects have one common goal — to identify novel therapeutic targets.

Clinical Senior Lecturer in Immunology
Dr John Maher is a clinical immunologist and immunopathologist who leads the "CAR Mechanics" research group within King's College London. His research group is focused on the development of adoptive immunotherapy using CAR engineered and gamma delta T-cells. He is also chief scientific officer of a spin-out company named Leucid Bio. In addition, he is a consultant immunologist within King's Health Partners and Eastbourne Hospital.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Laboratory of Gerhard Wagner, Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Biography

Professor, Cancer Immunology, Institute for Cancer Research
Karl-Johan Malmberg is a Hematologist and Professor of Immunology at the University of Oslo, Norway and a Visiting Professor in Cell-Based Cancer Immunotherapy at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. The Malmberg lab focuses on 1) basic questions concerning NK cell repertoire formation and regulation of effector cell function and 2) translational questions of how NK cells may be function-enabled for anti-cancer activity. The long-term goal of the laboratory is to advance our fundamental understanding of NK cell development and function, and use this progress to design new immunotherapeutic approaches and clinical trials for patients with cancer.

Director, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology
Gerard Manning is a pioneer in the genomics of protein kinases and signal transduction. He is the creator of the kinome catalog of human kinases, and a veteran of the kinase drug discovery company, Sugen, and of the Salk Institute. He is currently principal scientist at Genentech, working on a deeper understanding of cancer mechanisms by analysis of large-scale tumor mutation profiles.

Senior Consultant
Marc Mansour has over 17 years of experience in biotech R&D and management. he was Chief Scientific Officer then Chief Executive Officer of Immunovaccine, a vaccine development company. He has strong expertise in vaccines and the early clinical development of immuno-oncology products. He has published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and holds several patents. Dr. Mansour has a PhD in biology from Dalhousie University and an MBA from the Sobey School of Business.

Principal Investigator and Director of Medicinal Chemistry, IRIC and Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
Biography

Postdoctoral Researcher, Biochemistry
Andrea Marschall studied Molecular Biotechnology at Heidelberg University, gained a PhD in Stefan Dübel's lab on targeting antibodies into living cells, continuing with Postdoctoral research at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig (Germany) and at Brandeis University in Boston (USA).

Group Lead, Functional Genomics
Dr. Martin leads a functional genomics group at Genentech. His group conducts CRISPR, RNAi, and small molecule screens to interrogate a variety of basic biology and therapeutically relevant questions. Prior to joining Genentech in 2015, Dr. Martin created and directed an RNAi screening facility for the U.S. National Institutes of Health. There, his group collaborated with numerous NIH institutes to understand gene function in diverse areas. Among other findings, his group identified regulators of mitophagy, neuronal cell death, innate immunity, cancer cell death, and drug enhancement or resistance. Beyond mapping gene function, Dr. Martin has invested a good deal of effort towards understanding and improving best functional genomics screening practices.

Professor, Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences
Campbell McInnes, PhD is a Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of South Carolina, USA in Columbia where he has been for the last 12 years. He has over 20 years’ experience in Drug Discovery in both Industry and in Academia. Prior to joining USC he was the Head of Structure Based Drug Design at Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals, a company started by Professor Sir David Lane, one of the discoverers of the P53 tumor suppressor protein. His primary research interests are in developing methodology for improved targeting of protein-protein interactions and in applying this to the design of novel cancer therapeutics based on non-ATP competitive protein kinase inhibitors. Dr. McInnes has published over 50 research articles and contributed to many pharmaceutical patents. He is also the founding member of PPI Pharmaceuticals, LLC, a company started to commercialize therapeutics based on the aforementioned research.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Conor first developed an interest in creating novel tools for biological research as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health. While there, he worked to improve methods for genomic modification of Drosophila. Afterwards, he attended Princeton University for his PhD working under the advisement of Fred Hughson. At Princeton he focused on characterizing proteins involved in intracellular transport using structural and genetic methods. He joined Andrew Kruse’s Lab at Harvard Medical School in 2016 as a postdoctoral fellow. Conor’s protein engineering research in the Kruse Lab combines his interest in making new tools with his experience in structural biology. In his current role, he develops new antibody discovery methodologies and useful antibody tools for pharmacological research.

Professor
After obtaining his PhD studying RNA editing in the laboratory of Stephen L. Hajduk, Dr. Michael McManus began his postdoctoral training as a Cancer Research Institute fellow, in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Phillip A. Sharp, studying the role of RNA interference pathways in mammals. Since 2005 he has been a principle investigator at UCSF, overseeing a very productive and interactive lab studying diverse biological processes relating to gene regulation, using cultured cells and the mouse as a model. He was awarded tenure in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UCSF, and a year later bestowed the Vincent and Stella Coates Endowed Chair. Dr. McManus's work has a strong technology component, having developed cutting-edge research tools and large-scale resources that relate to artificial and natural small RNAs. These include siRNAs, microRNAs, and more sgRNAs. He harnesses RNA biology to interrogate gene function for the potential use in the intervention of human disease. Hi lab has have developed many types of complex gene perturbation libraries, pioneering novel high-throughput cell-based screening technologies and unique mouse models used throughout the research community.

Principal Scientist, Cancer Immunotherapy, Discovery Oncology, Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED)
Meher Majety PhD, is a principal scientist in pharma research and early development at the Roche Innovation Center Munich, Germany. After receiving his PhD in cell biology from the German cancer research center at Heidelberg, Meher joined Roche where he focused on understanding the cross-talk between tumor cells and the tumor microenvironment. Apart from leading several pre-clinical programs during his 10 years tenure at Roche, he also established 3D co-culture models studying the interaction between tumor cells and stromal cells including fibroblasts and immune cells. His current research focuses on harnessing the potential of innate immune cells in the context of cancer and developing new pharmacological approaches to therapeutically target tumor associated myeloid cells.

Group Leader, Microfluidics
Christoph A. Merten obtained his PhD from the University of Frankfurt in 2004. Subsequently he worked as a postdoc at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (UK) and the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) in Strasbourg, France, where he became a junior group leader in 2007. Christoph joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, as a Principal Investigator in 2010, focusing on microfluidic technology for HTS and genomics (www.merten.embl.de). His lab is particularly interested in the development of droplet-based microfluidics for cell-based screens. Christoph Merten is author of some of the most cited droplet-based microfluidics papers. He is also an inventor on a total of 17 patents (4 with him as the sole inventor) and collaborates with many academic consortia (e.g. The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, EU Blueprint Consortium) and industrial companies (e.g. Roche, GSK, Fluidigm, Diagenode) in Europe, Asia and the US. In late 2017, Christoph furthermore (co-)founded the antibody discovery company Velabs Therapeutics (www.velabs-therapeutics.com).

Chemical Genetics, Chemical Biology and Therapeutics (CBT)
My expertise and background is in biophysics-biochemistry with an emphasis on the development of assays-platform technologies to facilitate the identification of novel targets using small molecules identified and optimized from phenotypic screening campaigns. Within the Chemical Biology and Therapeutics (CBT) department at NIBR, I am currently leading project teams in Targeted Protein Degradation with the aim of developing therapeutics for protein classes that are difficult to drug. Prior to joining Novartis, I led the transfer of protein array technology developed in Michael Snyder’s lab at Yale University to a start-up company, Protometrix, and successfully developed numerous applications on high-content functional protein microarrays. I performed my post-doctoral work at Yale University and my undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Connecticut.

Scientific Consultant, Business Development
Dr. Minor has been a scientific consultant for Multispan since January 2012. She is a well-recognized scientific expert in drug discovery in several therapeutic areas, high throughput screening and safety profiling through her tenure at Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceuticals. She is an editor for NIH, served for 8 years on the advisory board for SBS (now SLAS) and on the Scientific Advisory Board for the National Toxicology Program and chaired international assay development meetings.

Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry & Lead Optimization
Dr. Mochalkin has been involved in Structure-Based Drug Discovery for over 15 years, leading Structural Biology, Computational and Medicinal Chemistry Teams across several therapeutic areas, including inflammation, oncology and infectious and cardiovascular diseases. Prior to re-joining EMD Serono Research and Development Institute (an American subsidiary of German Merck KGaA) as Associate Director in Medicinal Chemistry, Dr. Mochalkin played a critical role in supporting drug discovery programs at Pfizer (2003-2009), EMD Serono (2009-2012) and Eli Lilly (2012-1016), applying computational chemistry, fragment-based drug discovery, protein X-ray crystallography and Biophysics to early drug discovery and lead optimization. Dr. Mochalkin received his Diploma from Moscow State University, Russia and PhD in Chemistry from Michigan State University. He pursued his postdoctoral training at the University California San Diego. Dr. Mochalkin is co-author on over 20 peer reviewed scientific publications and patent applications and a co-inventor of two clinical candidates, BTK inhibitor M2851 (Phase II) and p70S6K & Akt inhibitor M2698 (Phase I).

President and CEO
James Moe, PhD, MBA, President and CEO, Co-Founder, Director, Principal Investigator - Dr. Moe has over 24 years’ industrial experience having held senior management experience in product development working on international teams in both early and late stage diagnostic, biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies including Gene-Trak/Amoco Technology Ventures/Vysis, bioMerieux, and Mosaic Technologies. Prior to founding Oligomerix, he was Director of Product Development at Pyrosequencing, Senior Molecular Biologist at Spire Biomedical, and Director of Product Development at Q-RNA; Inc. Dr. Moe received his PhD degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry/Molecular Biophysics from Wesleyan University, did his postdoctoral studies at Vanderbilt University in the Center for Molecular Toxicology where he was jointly appointed in the Biochemistry Department in the Medical School, and the Chemistry Department in the College of Arts and Sciences, and has an MBA degree with a concentration in entrepreneurial studies from Boston University.

CSO
Dr. Mueller was Senior Vice President Medicinal Chemistry, Mercachem. 2008-2011: CSO at Proteros Fragments, Munich. 2003-2008: CSO at Axxima Pharmaceuticals and VP Drug Discovery at GPC Biotech, Munich. 2001-2003: Head Medicinal Chemistry Lead Finding, Organon. 1994-2001: Project Manager at Bayer AG, Leverkusen. 1992-1994: Research Scientist at Glaxo, Verona.

Associate Professor
Alexander Muller is an Associate Professor at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR) and member of the Kimmel Cancer Center of the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Dr. Muller’s work has been at the forefront of emerging approaches for cancer treatment, including signal transduction inhibitor research in the 1980s and immuno-oncology research since the early 2000s. He is a leading authority on IDO1 (indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1) and its role in tumoral immune escape, having published on the genetic validation of IDO1’s role in cancer and on the development of small molecule inhibitors of IDO1. More recently, his laboratory has been engaged in studies leading to the discovery that IDO1 plays a key contributory role in inflammatory neovascularization involved in the pathogenesis of cancer and other diseases, as well as groundbreaking studies investigating IDO2 with potential implications for pancreatic cancer. Dr. Muller also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of IO Biotech which is developing a novel IDO1-directed, vaccine-based approach for cancer treatment.

Professor, Department of Medicine; Director, Early Phase Clinical Trials Unit, and Leader, Developmental Therapeutics Program
Dr. Munster is a physician scientist who received her medical degree from the University of Bern, Switzerland. She completed her medical training at Indiana University Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York where she then served on faculty as a breast cancer specialist prior to moving to the University of California, San Francisco, where she is Professor in Residence and Program Leader for the Experimental Therapeutics Program, as well as the Co-Leader of the Center for BRCA Research at Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her laboratory develops novel targeted cancer treatment strategies. Dr. Munster’s basic research also involves studies on heritable factors of tumor development and treatment. Her clinical mission is to more rapidly translate novel scientific discovery to patient care with a goal to allow patients with incurable cancer real time and broader access to scientific advances. Dr. Munster has published in numerous scientific journals and textbooks, and recently authored Twisting Fate, about her experience as an oncologist and cancer patient.

Principal Scientist, Antibody Repertoire Engineering and Screening
Chris Murawsky, PhD, is a Principal Scientist in the Department of Therapeutic Discovery at Amgen British Columbia. He received a PhD from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at the University of Cambridge and completed post-doctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences as a Wellcome Trust Overseas Research Fellow. He currently leads the Antibody Repertoire Engineering and Screening Group at Amgen’s Biologics Discovery center for excellence in Vancouver, British Columbia. The team is tasked with generating and characterizing large and diverse antibody repertoires against therapeutically relevant targets implicated in grievous human disease. The group has extensive experience discovering therapeutic monoclonal antibodies using a number of in vivo and in vitro platforms, including the transgenic XenoMouse® human antibody discovery engine. Chris’ current research interests include the development of novel methods to elicit and rescue antibodies with rare specificities or properties, using next generation sequencing of antibody repertoires for antibody discovery and leveraging nanoparticles to enhance the delivery of immunogens for challenging therapeutic targets.

Scientist, Cancer Immunology
Aditya completed his undergraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. His PhD explored the role of metalloproteinase enzymes and their inhibitors in inflammation, focusing on cytokine biology. With a growing interest in mucosal immunology, Aditya joined the Immunology Department of Genentech as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Menno van Lookeren Campagne in 2011. Focusing on human genetics and the contribution of germline variants to inflammatory bowel disease, Aditya’s work investigated the role of autophagy, a cellular catabolic process, in regulating the immune response. This work identified a molecular mechanism underlying a common risk variant in the autophagy gene Atg16L1, whereby a missense mutation (T300A) sensitized the protein to Caspase-mediated degradation and compromised autophagy (Murthy et al, Nature 2014). In 2014, Aditya joined the Cancer Immunology department as a Scientist in the stromal biology group led by Dr. Shannon Turley and Dr. Ira Mellman. Currently, Aditya’s group uses insights gained from GWAS (genome-wide association studies) of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases to identify pathways that may contribute to a productive anti-tumor immune response. A strong focus of the lab is elucidation of targetable nodes in the autophagy pathway.

Senior Research Advisor, Biotechnology & Autoimmunity Res-AME
Songqing Na is a senior research advisor at Eli Lilly’s Immunology research, Biotechnology Center, San Diego. He has been working on discovery of novel therapeutic proteins, oncology drug discovery and immunology research for autoimmune diseases. Several projects he led and helped have been advanced in clinical at different stages. Dr. Na has extensive experience in both large and small molecule drug discovery covering both oncology and immunology.

Professor, Eppley Institute for Cancer Research, Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center
Amar Natarajan is a Professor at Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases, University of Nebraska Medical Center. He also co-Leads the Cancer Genes and Molecular Regulation Program within the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center. The Natarajan lab is focused on the development of target and mechanism specific small molecule inhibitors as pre-therapeutics against disease relevant biological targets. Ongoing projects include targeting (i) protein-protein interactions mediated by BRCA1(BRCT) and Cbl(TKB) (ii) small GTP binding protein Rac1 and (iii) kinases CDK5, CDK9, Gwl, HRI and IKKβ. The initial hits for these projects were identified via high throughput screening (HTS) campaigns and are currently in the hit-to-lead optimization stage. In parallel, structure-guided methods are used for the rational design / optimization of small molecule inhibitors for the above targets.

Staff Scientist, Department of Molecular Biology
Biography

Senior Director
Kuldeep Neote, PhD, is Senior Director at J&J Innovation Center-Boston and is responsible for New Venture and Scouting opportunities in the areas of Oncology and Immunology in the East Coast. Dr. Neote is trained as a Molecule Biologist with an extensive background in drug discovery. He has been focused in the area of Immunology, Inflammation and Oncology and has a passion for implementing cutting edge scientific discoveries into practical drug discovery programs. Throughout his career, he has looked at creative scientific and business development collaborative and partnering opportunities that have resulted in tangible clinical translation of new scientific discoveries working in conjunction with academic and biotech companies.
Formerly, Dr. Neote was Research Advisor/Director in Global External R&D at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, IN. Prior to Eli Lilly, he was a Discovery Scientist in Pfizer Inc. in Groton, CT. Dr. Neote initiated the Chemokine Receptor Drug Discovery platform that lead to several clinical candidates, and also discovered novel chemokines. Earlier in his career, Dr. Neote cloned one of the first chemokine receptors during his post-doctoral studies in Genentech.
Dr. Neote earned her BSc. in Microbial and Cellular Biology at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada, and a PhD in Human and Molecule Genetics at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, where he was a major contributor in the understanding of the molecular basis of lysosomal storage diseases, in particular Tay Sachs and Sandhoff’s disease.

Chairman, Clinical & Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Nicodemus is a graduate of Harvard College and received his doctorate from SUNY Syracuse. His career interest has been in experimental medicine and applied clinical immunology. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians who received his post-doctoral training in medicine and clinical immunology at Harvard. He is an alumnus of the Austen laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, has held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, and served in senior management positions in both Pharma and Biotech. He was the Founder, Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Immune Therapeutics, and is the Principal of AIT Strategies and Chairman of the Scientific and Clinical Advisory Board at OncoQuest,Inc. which is focused on innovative applications of monoclonal antibodies in therapeutic immunology.

Vice President, Biotherapeutics Molecule Discovery
Dr. Nixon is currently Vice President, Biotherapeutics Molecule Discovery. In this role he is globally responsible for biologics lead generation and optimization including internal technology infrastructure.
Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim Dr. Nixon was Head of Research for Dyax Corp. where he oversaw all early drug discovery programs from evaluation of target proposals to IND filing including most recently DX-2930, a fully human antibody inhibitor of plasma kallikrein. Dr. Nixon was responsible for drug discovery using Dyax’s phage display technology and the subsequent generation of cell lines suitable for antibody manufacturing.
Dr. Nixon earned his PhD from the University of London for studies completed at the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research. Dr. Nixon completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Prof. S.J. Benkovic, in the Department of Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University, where he was involved in the development of techniques to facilitate enzyme engineering.

Co-Founder, Head, Research and Development
Dr. Tatiana Novobrantseva is a co-founder and the Head of Research and Development in the new immunology focused company Verseau Therapeutics. Prior to co-founding Verseau, she consulted for multiple companies on various immunological aspects of drug development across different stages and therapeutic modalities. At her prior position as Director of Tumor Immunology at Jounce Therapeutics, Tatiana defined research plans for several programs at the company’s inception, as well as led a portfolio of programs on (re)activating the immune system against cancer. Her previous positions include Associate Director at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Scientist II at Biogen. Some of Tatiana’s scientific accomplishments include discovering the critical role for B cells in liver fibrosis, pushing the envelope on siRNA delivery to immune cells and championing a siRNA-assisted dendritic cell cancer vaccine project. Tatiana is an inventor on more than 22 patents and an author on more than 36 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Tatiana completed her PhD with Dr. Klaus Rajewsky in Cologne, Germany, focusing on B cell development and function.

Project leader, Csaba Pál Lab, Synthetic and Systems Biology Unit
Akos works as a Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds PhD student at the Synthetic and Systems Biology Unit of the Biological Research Centre in Hungary and he also leads the Evolutionary Genome Engineering Research Unit within the Laboratory of Csaba Pal. Akos’ research targets healthcare and biotechnology with bacterial synthetic biology. He is interested in advancing synthetic biology to understand the mode-of-action of antibacterial drugs and the evolution of bacterial drug resistance. His research explores the use of accelerated evolution and high-throughput mutagenesis to analyze resistance-processes and thereby aid the development of novel antibiotics against pathogenic bacteria. Akos has so far developed methods to perform precise genetic engineering and accelerate evolutionary processes in relevant human pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Shigella, Salmonella, and multidrug-resistant Klebsiella strains. His current work focuses on the predictability of antibiotic resistance and the exploitation of these resistance mechanisms for more-effective antimicrobial agents. More info about his research is available at Twitter @AkosNyerges and at Akos’ webpage: http://group.szbk.u-szeged.hu/sysbiol/EvGEn/index.html

Senior Principal Scientist
Eliud Oloo is a Sr. Principal Scientist at Schrödinger. He joined Schrödinger from Sanofi where, for ten years, he led structure-based vaccine design initiatives against a variety of infectious disease targets. Eliud completed his PhD in Biomolecular Simulations at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Canada.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatric Surgery
Dr. Scott Olson completed his doctorate in the lab of Dr. Darwin Prockop at Tulane University’s Center for Gene Therapy studying novel methods by which mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) can contribute to tissue repair. At University of California at Davis’s Health Sciences Institute for Regenerative Cures under the direction of Jan Nolta, Scott worked to apply MSC as a platform to develop new treatments for Huntington’s Disease. Scott Olson joined the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston’s Department of Pediatric Surgery’s Program in Regenerative Medicine in 2011. Scott has studied the biology of MSC for over 16 years. At UTHealth, Scott has been actively studying the therapeutic mechanisms of MSC, MSC-derived products, and other cell products. His research focus extends from basic research of MSC immunobiology in in vitro culture systems through in vivo models of CNS trauma. Scott works in close collaboration with Dr. Charles Cox Jr. MD, the Director of the Program, and Dr. Fabio Triolo, the Director of the Cell Therapy Core cGMP facilities to create an integrated process development pipeline. In this capacity, Scott’s pre-clinical studies are aimed at streamlining process development, regulatory manufacturing, and clinical applications.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Laboratory of Dr. Wade Harper, Department of Cell Biology
Dr. Ordureau is a Post-Doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Wade Harper at Harvard Medical School. He received his PhD in Biochemistry (2011) at the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit in Dundee (Scotland, U.K.) under the supervision of Prof. Sir Philip Cohen. During this time, Dr. Ordureau's work focused on the innate immune signaling pathway with an emphasis on two enzyme families; E3 ubiquitin (Ub) ligases and kinases. More recently, Dr. Ordureau's research has focused on Parkinson’s disease with a special interest in understanding the molecular mechanism of PARKIN and PINK pathway, which is involved in mitochondrial quality control. Using proteomics, biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics Dr. Ordureau quantitatively analyzed Ub chain synthesis on mitochondria and substrate ubiquitylation in response to PARKIN activation. He’s demonstrated that PARKIN promotes the formation of both canonical and non-canonical Ub chains on mitochondrial substrates and displays dramatic Lys site specificity within targets. Lately, this lead him to develop a quantitative assay to measure PARKIN-dependent Ub signaling on mitochondria in embryonic stem cell-derived neurons upon activation of mitophagy pathway.

Professor of Law, N. Neal Pike Scholar in Health and Disability Law, Boston University; Executive Director, CARB-X
Professor Kevin Outterson teaches health law and corporate law at Boston University, where he co-directs the Health Law Program, currently ranked #3 in the country by US News and World Report. He is the executive director of Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X), a global partnership hosted at BU Law that is focused on supporting developers of promising new antibiotics, diagnostics, and vaccines that tackle the threat of untreatable bacterial infections. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics; faculty co-advisor to the American Journal of Law & Medicine; past chair of the Section on Law, Medicine & Health Care of the AALS; and a member of the Board of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Professor Outterson was recently named to the Advisory Panel for the Longitude Prize, which awards £10 million to address antibiotic resistance. Before teaching, Outterson was a partner at two major US law firms. His research focuses on the organization and finance of the health sector. Areas of specialization include global pharmaceutical markets, particularly antibiotics and other antimicrobials that can degrade in usefulness over time through resistance. He received a grant from the European Union’s Innovative Medicines Initiative to study business models and incentives for antibiotic development, and he leads an interdisciplinary project on the legal ecology of antimicrobial resistance, funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program on public health law. He is an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London, where he works on global solutions to antibiotic resistance, and an appointed member of the Antimicrobial Resistance Working Group at the Centers for Disease Control. Professor Outterson has testified before President Obama’s Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic Resistance, where he presented the results of a two-year study sponsored by the European Union on designing economic incentives for antibiotic development. Another significant body of work critiques access and equity issues created by global patent and drug regulation laws. Key texts in this debate include the WTO TRIPS Agreement and related trade agreements. Professor Outterson publishes in both legal journals (Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics; Cardozo Law Review; University of Pittsburgh Law Review; Kansas Law Review; American Journal of Law & Medicine) and peer-reviewed medical and health policy journals (New England Journal of Medicine; Health Affairs; Lancet Infectious Diseases; Environmental Philosophy; Medical Journal of Australia; Journal of Generic Medicines; Clinical Infectious Diseases; Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics). He blogs on health policy issues at The Incidental Economist, one of the leading health economics blogs in the US. On behalf of The New England Journal of Medicine and other clients, Outterson filed an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court, supporting Vermont’s prescription privacy law. His work was cited by Justice Breyer in Sorrell v. IMS Health. A team led by Professors Outterson and Moncrieff at Boston University filed four amicus briefs supporting the Affordable Care Act, which was heard by the Court in the spring of 2012.His academic papers can be found on his SSRN page.

Associate Member, Cell Biology Program
Michael Overholtzer is an Associate Member in the Cell Biology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He received his bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College and his PhD from Princeton University, where he performed research on the p53 tumor suppressor with Arnold J. Levine. In his postdoc with Joan S. Brugge at Harvard Medical School, he identified the Hippo pathway effector Yap as an oncoprotein in breast cancer, and discovered a cell death mechanism called entosis. In his independent laboratory, he continues to study mechanisms of cell death, autophagy, and lysosomes.

Scientist II
Ayşegül did her PhD at UMass Medical School in Celia Schiffer’s group focusing on understanding and predicting the structural determinants of anti-viral drug resistance via computational structural biology. She moved on to Genentech for a postdoctoral fellowship investigating the structural basis of USP7 activation and protein engineering where she combined computational approaches with biochemistry and x-ray crystallography. After postdoc, she worked as a senior scientist at Pfizer Discovery Sciences Computational Analysis and Design group supporting the Protein Degrader Platform. She is currently a computational chemist at Blueprint Medicines.

Associate Director, Structural Biology and Biophysics, Department of Biochemistry
Biography

Chair and Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College; Laboratory Head, Molecular Pharmacology Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dr. Gavril Pasternak holds the Anne Burnett Tandy Chair in Neurology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where he is an Attending Neurologist in Memorial Hospital and a Laboratory Head in the Molecular Pharmacology Program within the Sloan-Kettering Institute. After receiving his MD and PhD degrees from the Johns Hopkins University he completed his clinical training in Neurology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering in 1979. He is known for his work on opioid receptors, starting with the initial description of the ‘sodium effect’ and its modulation of agonist/antagonist conformations of the mu opioid receptor, a concept that has now been extended to all G-protein coupled receptors. He proposed the existence of multiple subpopulations of mu opioid receptors based upon chemical biological approaches and confirmed the hypothesis by isolating a vast array of splice variants of the mu opioid receptor gene. From these mu opioid receptor variants, he identified a subset that can be targeted to produce potent analgesics without many of the side-effects of current drugs. He has published over 400 articles and has served on the Editorial Boards of numerous scientific journals as well as the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and of the American Neurological Association and a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. He has received numerous awards, including the Millenium Prize from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the PhRMA Foundation 2018 Award in Excellence in Pharmacology/Toxicology, the John J. Bonica Award from the Eastern Pain Association, the Julius Axelrod Award from the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the S. Weir Mitchell Award from the American Academy of Neurology, the Louise and Allston Boyer Young Investigator Award from MSKCC and a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He has been honored with the 2014 William Potter Lecture at Thomas Jefferson University, the 6th Donald W. Benson Lectureship on Pain Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the 1st Annual Machaskee Memorial Lectureship at the Cleveland Clinic. He lives in New York City with his children. In 1996 he co-founded the Bernard “Doc” Schoenbaum Youth Lacrosse League in New York City which has served several thousand boys and girls in grades 8 and below since its inception. In 2001 and again in 2010 he was honored as Man of the Year by the Metro Men’s Division Coaches Council of US Lacrosse.

Director, Structural Biology
Joe Patel currently leads the Structural Biology group at C4 Therapeutics tasked with gaining greater insight into degrader induced ternary complex formation. Prior to this he spent 6 years as a protein crystallographer and fragment chemistry team leader within the Structure & Biophysics group at AstraZeneca, where he continued to champion the use of FBLG across therapeutic areas and particularly the utility of X-ray cocktail screening to characterize ligand binding pockets. Joe received his PhD in 2001 from the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Prof. Sir Tom Blundell and began his research career at Astex Pharmaceuticals, where he contributed to multiple programs that are currently in late stage clinical studies.

CEO
Andrew Patterson obtained his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Rice University in 2003. He then moved to the University of California – Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. working with Professor Jonathan A. Ellman. In 2008, Andrew began his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University working with Professor Justin Du Bois, and then joined the Global Discovery Chemistry group at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in 2009. In nine years at Novartis, he has worked on projects spanning cardiovascular, renal, liver, hematology, and ophthalmology disease areas, including work on siRNA technologies and C-H functionalization chemistry.

Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistryy
Dehua Pei is the Charles H. Kimberly Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The Ohio State University. He received his PhD degree in organic chemistry from University of California, Berkeley, and was a Damon Runyon-Winchell Walter Cancer Fund postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty at The Ohio State University. His research group is currently developing new methodologies for combinatorial synthesis and screening of macrocyclic peptides/peptidomimetcis, cyclic cell-penetrating peptides for drug delivery, and macrocyclic inhibitors against previously undruggable targets, such as intracellular protein-protein interactions.

Associate Director, Antibody Discovery
I received my PhD from University of Michigan Ann Arbor in protein crystallography. I did a postdoc at The Scripps Research Institute, where I studies broadly neutralizing HIV-1 antibodies, solving crystal structure of such antibodies bound to viral envelope glycoproteins. After that, I took a scientist position at Adimab LLC. Currently, as associate director of antibody discovery, my group works on antibody discovery and optimization, with a focus on CD3 bispecifics and challenging membrane protein targets such as GPCRs.

CSO
Dr Trevor Perrior FRSC is CSO at Domainex, a contract research company with collaborators that range from academic groups to large and small pharma. Trevor has held senior management roles in ICI, AstraZeneca, Celltech, and UCB; he is an inventor on over 50 patents, and has authored over 20 scientific papers and articles. Under his leadership thirteen candidate drugs have been invented and taken into development: four of these have reached the clinic, and two are in pre-clinical development.

COO
Dr. Peterson recently co-founded Cyclenium Pharma with a focus on developing and utilizing a next generation macrocyclic technology for novel drug discovery. Prior to Cyclenium, Dr. Peterson was Vice President, IP & Operations at Tranzyme Pharma, a pioneer in the use of small molecule macrocycles in pharmaceutical research, where he led the chemistry R & D efforts during the technology development stage of the company and the initiation of its discovery programs, then later was instrumental in contributing to the development of its clinical portfolio and building an extensive portfolio of over 120 patents and applications. Previously with Monsanto and Advanced ChemTech, he has worked in a variety of research areas including structure-based design, solid phase organic chemistry, combinatorial technologies, synthetic automation, heterocycles, unnatural amino acids, peptides and peptidomimetics. A native of Wisconsin, he received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Washington State University and conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Minnesota, the last year receiving an NIH National Research Service Award. He is author or co-author of over 85 publications and abstracted presentations plus three book chapters, as well as co-inventor on over 25 patents.

Associate Member, Department of Cell and Molecular Biologyl
Ryan Potts obtained his BS from the University of North Carolina and his PhD from UT Southwestern. In 2008 he was awarded the Sara and Frank McKnight independent postdoctoral fellowship at UT Southwestern Medical Center. During this time his research focused on biochemically defining a novel family of proteins called MAGEs as regulators of E3 ubiquitin ligases. In 2011 he was appointed Assistant Professor in the department of Physiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. In 2016 his lab moved to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where he is an Associate Member in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. His lab continues to work on elucidating the functions of MAGE-RING Ligases.

Founder & Managing Director
Before founding Ares Genetics in March 2017, Andreas was responsible for BioIT R&D at Siemens Healthcare as well as Software Sensors & Analytics with Siemens Corporate Technology. As designated Principal Key Expert for Bioinformatics & Systems Medicine at Siemens Healthcare, he developed, executed and directed global innovation and R&D projects focusing on next-generation sequencing for diagnostic purposes, biomarker discovery, multi-scale disease modeling, advanced clinical decision support as well as genetic antibiotic resistance testing. Andreas has an academic background in bioinformatics and biotechnology and his research resulted in more than 50 scientific publication and conference contributions and was recognized by international awards and several million Euro funding from industry and competitive grants.

Former Senior Vice President, MedImmune; Beat the Reaper, LLC
Biography

Senior Scientific Director, Computational Biology
Biography

Associate Professor, Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics
Arvind Rao was until recently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center since 2011. Prior to joining MD Anderson, he was a Lane Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in bioimage informatics. Arvind received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan, specializing in transcriptional genomics. At MD Anderson, Arvind is working on using image analysis and machine learning methods to link image-derived phenotypes with genetic data, across biological scale (i.e. single cell, tissue and radiology data).

Scientist, Discovery Biology
Bhuvana Ravishankar obtained her PhD in Immunology at the Medical College of Georgia. Under the guidance of Dr.Tracy McGaha, she was one of the first to demonstrate that specialized tissue-resident macrophages control early immunity to apoptotic cells regulating both dendritic cell and T cell responses to apoptotic antigens and disrupting the function of these macrophage subsets renders mice susceptible to apoptotic cell-driven autoimmune disease. Dr.Ravishankar pursued her post-doctoral training at Genentech in the Department of Cancer Immunology in Dr.Georgia Hatzivassiliou’s lab. She was responsible for investigating the mechanism/s of suppression of Myeloid Derived Suppressor Cells (MDSC) in the tumor microenvironment. She was also exploring strategies for therapeutic immune modulation of MDSC to maximize anti-tumor immune responses. Dr. Ravishankar is currently a Discovery Biology Scientist at FLX Bio,Inc., which is an immuno-oncology company focused on the discovery and development of orally-available, small molecule drugs to activate the immune system and eradicate cancer. Her research interests involve understanding MDSC mediated tolerance, strategies to improve anti-tumor immune response and translating these findings in clinical trials.

Assistant Professor, Biosystems Science and Engineering
Sai Reddy is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich in the Dept. of Biosystems Science & Engineering (since 01.02.2012). His research group focuses on immunogenomics by next-generation sequencing and bioinformatic analysis of immune repertoires and reprogramming of immune cells by genome engineering for applications in biotechnology, vaccination, and immunotherapy
Prof. Reddy holds BS (2003) and MS (2004) degrees from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL, USA) in Biomedical Engineering. He completed his PhD thesis at Ecolé Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) in Bioengineering and Biotechnology in 2008. Prof. Reddy moved to University of Texas, Austin (USA) for his post-doctoral fellowship (2008-2011), where he worked on protein and antibody engineering.

CEO
Laurence Reid brings to Warp Drive Bio more than 25 years of experience within the global biotechnology industry, including the areas of general management, business development and strategic planning. Most recently, he served as chief business officer of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, where he led business development strategy and efforts, including forming the company's transformational agreement with Genzyme, a Sanofi company, plus alliances with Medicines Company, Monsanto and GlaxoSmithKline. Prior to Alnylam, Dr. Reid was chief business officer at Ensemble Therapeutics, where he led the development and implementation of key business strategies for the company's therapeutic and diagnostic portfolios, as well as executed major therapeutic discovery alliances with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer Inc. Dr. Reid's previous entrepreneurial experiences include the founding of startup companies in the fields of stem cell therapeutics and inflammation. He also spent 10 years at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he worked in a range of general management and business development positions. Roles included general manager of Millennium UK with responsibility for Millennium's European operations, vice president of business development for the company's predictive medicine efforts, as well as in pharmaceutical business development and technology acquisition. Before joining Millennium, he was an assistant editor of the premier journal Cell. Dr. Reid received his PhD from London University and his B.A. from Cambridge University. He is a member of the board of directors of The Possible Project, a youth entrepreneurship center that teaches high school students to start and run their own businesses.

Scientist, Early Research
Dante Ricci is a microbial geneticist with extensive training in cell biology, synthetic biology, biochemistry, microscopy, and genomics, as well as specific expertise in the biogenesis and physiology of the Gram-negative bacterial cell envelope, a structure of significant biomedical and biotechnological interest. Dante earned his PhD in Molecular Biology in the laboratory of Thomas Silhavy at Princeton University before pursuing postdoctoral training with National Medal of Science recipient Lucy Shapiro as a NIH/NRSA Fellow in the Department of Developmental Biology at Stanford University. His research has been featured in top-tier peer reviewed journals, and he has presented his work extensively at national and international scientific conferences. After serving for two years as a consulting expert for the antibacterial therapeutic antibody program, Dante joined Achaogen full-time, bringing over a decade of experience combining the power of classical genetics with the unprecedented throughput and scale of modern molecular biological innovations. He currently leads the antibacterial antibody program at Achaogen.

VP, Biology
Rene Rijnbrand is VP of Biology at Arbutus Biopharma where he is focused on HBV anti-viral and immuno-modulating efforts. After an academic career focused on viral translation initiation he transitioned to industry where he directed anti-viral drug discovery for a range of viruses covering both DAAs and host targets as well as gram-negative antibiotic discovery projects. Dr. Rijnbrand received his PhD degree from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

Senior Research Scientist and Group Leader, Biology
Matthew Robers is a Senior Research Scientist and Group Leader at Promega Corporation. Graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has authored over 27 peer-reviewed publications and published patents on the application of novel assay chemistries to measure intracellular protein dynamics. Our team focuses on the development of new technologies to assess target engagement, and biophysical assays to measure compound affinity and kinetics at selected targets within intact cells.

Research Informatics
Dan Robinhold cut his teeth in the lab developing novel fluorescent enzyme substrates at Molecular Probes under Richard and Rosaria Haugland. Transitioning into software in 1999 he helped develop CambridgeSoft’s ChemACX.com, the Available Chemicals eXchange and then worked in the Cambridgesoft Enterprise suite of products. Dan is currently serving in the informatics group at CDD where CDD Vault offers, Activity & Registration, Data Visualization, ELN, Inventory and new modules for 2018 and beyond. Dan is enjoying interfacing with satisfied customers in drug discovery to optimize their use of private and collaborative SAR data.

Senior Director, Biologics Discovery
With both Bachelor’s and PhD degrees in Pharmacology, I have had a consistent focus on mechanisms of signal transduction mechanisms for over 30 years. Early work on cardiac thyroid and retinoid receptor mechanisms of transcriptional regulation was followed by work on bHLH regulators of myogenic commitment and differentiation in muscle. With the advent of gene targeting technology, our academic team made a concerted effort to uncover the roles of cardiac adrenergic receptor signaling via knockout of alpha-2 and 1/2 adrenergic receptors in the Kobilka lab. Making use of these transgenic and gene targeting technologies at BMS, our Discovery team there has created a humanized mouse platform whereby human Ab genes have functionally replaced those of the mouse. As GPCRs remain as some of the most relevant and targetable classes for drug discovery, we have turned our attention to generating high affinity therapeutic and reagent antibodies. An early win here was in developing anti-2-AR antibodies that were used to solve some of the early crystal structures of this receptor. Subsequent work has allowed us to generate both tool molecules as well as clinical candidates against this important class of targets.

Portfolio Leader, Research and Development
Jeannie Rojas, PhD, MBA is a Portfolio Leader with Janssen R&D, a Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Company. She has recently led the late stage development, BLA submission and approval of Tremfya, the first marketed anti-IL23. In addition, she focuses on the development of early stage programs with novel modalities like alternative scaffolds and the microbiome. Within Johnson & Johnson, she has held positions of increasing responsibility in R&D, Business Development and the Janssen Innovation Centers. She has a PhD from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton Business School.

Member Faculty and Director, Haploidentical Donor Transplant Program, Oncology/ BMT and Leukemia Program, Dana Farber Cancer Institute
I am a translational and academic researcher with focus on translating novel aspects of immunology to improve treatments for patients with hematologic malignancies. I have extensive experience in concepts and techniques in the field of immunobiology, and specifically NK cell biology. We described human cytokine induced memory-like (CIML) NK cells induced by brief activation with cytokines (IL-12, IL-15 and IL-18). These memory-like NK cells have enhanced anti-tumor responses (direct cell cytotoxicity and antibody dependent cell cytotoxicity), proliferate and persist longer after adoptive transfer in animal models, making them attractive for cellular immunotherapy for advanced cancer patients. At Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and Harvard Medical School, I am leading efforts to expand the use of memory-like NK cell-based studies in patients with advanced hematologic malignancies and also to test them in combination with other novel agents to potentially further enhance their anti-tumor activity. Furthermore, I also lead our haploidentical donor transplant efforts to broaden the donor availability for patients with otherwise no traditionally matched donors and also to use this as a platform for incorporating novel NK cell-based immunotherapies.

Vice President, Research and Development
Joe Rucker is the Vice President of Research & Development, a co-founder of Integral Molecular and an inventor of Integral Molecular’s founding Lipoparticle technology. Since joining the company, he has led the development of new applications for Lipoparticle technology, including its use in generating novel antibodies against membrane proteins. Dr. Rucker earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and completed post doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Assistant Member, Department of Immunology
Brian Ruffell, PhD is an Assistant Member in the Department of Immunology at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Florida, with secondary/courtesy appointments in the Department of Breast Oncology and the University of South Florida. The Ruffell lab is focused on the regulation and roles of dendritic cells in controlling the development of breast, ovarian and prostate cancer, and in dictating the efficacy of chemotherapy and targeted therapeutics. Dr. Ruffell received his PhD in Immunology at the University of British Columbia in 2008, and completed his postdoctoral studies investigating the impact of macrophages on response to therapeutic intervention at the University of California, San Francisco and Oregon Health and Science University in 2015.

Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
Biography

Scientist, Infectious Diseases
Steven Rutherford, PhD, is a Scientist in the Infectious Diseases Department at Genentech. His group aims to identify potential antibacterial targets in Gram-negative bacteria, validate these targets in vitro and in vivo, and discover inhibitors of these targets to potentially develop as novel antibiotics. His group focusses on the processes involved in assembling the outer membrane, a distinct permeability barrier in Gram-negative bacteria, and is exploring the use of non-traditional inhibitors, such as antibodies. Dr. Rutherford received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin studying the regulation of ribosomal RNA transcription initiation in the laboratory of Professor Richard Gourse. Before joining the Infectious Diseases Department at Genentech, Dr. Rutherford pursued postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Bonnie Bassler at Princeton University investigating the mechanisms of bacterial cell-cell communication.

Associate Director, Translational Science
Kris studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Biochemistry, Immunology and Toxicology. Next, he studied tumor viruses during a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh in the lab of Dr. Jim Pipas. Kris then worked in two startup-biotechnology companies: Automated Cell in Pittsburgh and Arius in Toronto. In both companies, kris led teams doing anti-cancer antibody discovery. After joining Medimmune in 2008, Kris led the first Oncology Research bi-specific antibody project as well as various “Function First” target/lead discovery projects. One of these projects led to discovery of a functionally active antibody targeting CD73, an ectoenzyme which generates adenosine within the tumor microenvironment. Kris led the project team from target discovery, through validation, lead isolation and discovery through to filing of an IND and support of the clinical team for what became the first anti-CD73 antibody to enter human clinical trials: MEDI9447. Recently Kris joined the Translational Sciences group at Astrazeneca.

Assistant Professor, Departments of Biology, Neuroscience and Physiology, New York University; Core Faculty Member, New York Genome Center
Neville Sanjana, PhD, is a Core Faculty Member at the New York Genome Center and is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Biology and of Neuroscience and Physiology at New York University. As a bioengineer, Dr. Sanjana creates new tools to understand the impact of genetic changes on the nervous system and cancer evolution. Dr. Sanjana is a recipient of the NIH’s New Innovator Award and Pathway to Independence Award, the AAAS Wachtel Prize for Cancer Research, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Sidney Kimmel Scholar Award, the Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science Next Generation Leader Award. Previously, he was a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Sanjana holds a PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT, a BS in Symbolic Systems and a BA in English from Stanford University.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, The Andrew M. Tager Fibrosis Research Center and Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases, Department of Medicine
Biography

Associate Research Director and Head of the Peptide Chemistry group
Pottayil G Sasikumar is an Associate Research Director and Head of the Peptide Chemistry group at Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited, a biotech company engaged in small molecule and peptide drug discovery for cancer and inflammatory diseases. He has been engaged in peptide therapeutics and peptide/amino acid inspired small molecule drug discovery for more than 12 years. At Aurigene he led efforts in establishing the state of the art peptide/peptidomimetic capability and discovering the first-in-class orally available small molecule immune checkpoint antagonists. Prior to joining Aurigene, Sasikumar carried out his postdoctoral studies at Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Sweden and completed his Ph D in peptide chemistry at Mahatma Gandhi University, India. He has eight granted patents and filed over 20 patents.

Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Sawa is the Chief Scientific Officer, a member of the Board of Carna Biosciences, Inc. At Carna, he set up the Drug Discovery group. Before joining Carna, he was a senior research scientist at Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma. Prior to that, he was a medicinal chemist at Nippon Organon, a subsidiary of N.V. Organon. From 2004 to 2006, he was a visiting scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. He received his PhD from Kyoto University in 1998.

Distinguished Scientist, Peptide Drug Discovery & Innovative Technologies
At Merck, Dr. Sawyer leads a Peptide Drug Hunter Network of more than 300 scientists who are actively engaged in peptide drug discovery programs, core capabilities and a knowledge engine. Prior to joining Merck & Company, Inc., Tomi was the founding Chief Scientific Officer at Aileron Therapeutics and Senior Vice-President of Drug Discovery at Ariad Pharmaceuticals (recently acquired by Takeda). He is credited with pioneering work across receptors, proteases, kinases and protein–protein interaction target space that has resulted in novel peptides, peptidomimetics, small-molecules and natural products that have advanced into the clinic and are now marketed drugs. Tomi is credited with more than 550 scientific publications, patents, and presentations. He holds Adjunct Professorship and Scientific Advisory Board appointments at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Northeastern University Center for Drug Discovery. Tomi is past-President of the American Peptide Society, was co-Chair of the Eighteenth American Peptide Symposium and is a recipient of the DuVigneud Award for his peptide scientific achievements.

Head of Research & Development
Stephan Schann is director of R&D activities at Domain Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focusing on GPCR drug discovery and early development. He is responsible for both internal and collaborative programs involving the different proprietary technology platforms used at Domain. Before, Stephan spent 6 years at Faust Pharmaceuticals, a CNS clinical biopharmaceutical company, where he set up the medicinal chemistry activity. Prior to his position at Faust, Stephan was Team Leader at EvotecOAI, Abingdon, UK from 2001 to 2003. Stephan received his PhD from University de Strasbourg, France in 2001 working on the synthesis of the first imidazoline I1-selective ligands.

Associate Research Fellow, Medicine Design, Inflammation & Immunology Research
Dr. Mark Schnute received his PhD degree in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign. He then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford University. Mark then joined the medicinal chemistry group at Pharmacia. There he led several programs towards the development of antivirals including the advancement a novel broad-spectrum, non-nucleoside herpes antiviral into clinical trials. Mark then joined the Inflammation research group at Pfizer. With Pfizer, his research has focused on the development of treatments for osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune diseases. His areas of interest have been in novel approaches to kinase inhibition and the investigation of modulators for inflammatory lipid signaling pathways.

Vice President and Global Head, Cancer Immunology and Immune Modulation
Jonathon Sedgwick, BSc (Hons) PhD born Perth Australia, is an Immunologist, educated at the University of Western Australia with post-doctoral education at the University of Oxford, UK. His subsequent career included ten years in academic research in Wurzburg Germany and Sydney Australia, followed by six years as Group Director, Immunology, at the DNAX Research Institute, Schering Plough/Merck’s biotech arm in Palo Alto, California, and 11 years with Eli Lilly and Company where he held a number of roles including CSO, Cancer Inflammation Research; Managing Director and CSO of Lilly’s Singapore Research Center, and CSO, Autoimmunity Discovery Research and Distinguished Research Fellow, Biotechnology and Autoimmunity. In November 2015 Jonathon joined the German Biopharmaceutical Company Boehringer Ingelheim in a newly created role of Vice President and Global Head Cancer Immunology and Immune Modulation. In this role he is responsible for the development of the Immuno-oncology discovery and early clinical portfolio, and for immune-modulation research globally contributing immunology target concepts and discovery portfolio programs across all therapy areas. Jonathon has authored or co-authored 120 peer-reviewed, review articles and book chapters. Amongst his key contributions to the immunology field was the discovery with colleagues at DNAX of the dominant biological role of the interleukin-23 cytokine in autoimmune inflammation, and through this identifying the IL-17-producing T cell subset, Th17. This work was fundamental in reorienting the autoimmune therapy field towards a focus on therapeutics in the IL-23/Th17/IL-17 axis, with drugs directed to these pathway components now launched (IL-17A inhibitors including the mAb ixekizumab from Eli Lilly) and others including IL-23p19 inhibitors launched or in phase 2 and 3 clinical testing across multiple companies and indications (e.g., J&J’s guselkumab, Boehringer Ingelheim/Abbvie’s risankizumab).

The Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases, Harvard Medical School; Co-Director, Center for Neurologic Diseases, Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Dennis Selkoe MD: Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases, Harvard Medical School; Co-Director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Graduated Columbia and University of Virginia, trained at NIH, Harvard/Longwood Neurology and HMS Department of Neuroscience. Selkoe and colleagues isolated the tangles of Alzheimer’s disease and co-discovered their antigenic relationship to tau. His research on amyloid ß-protein and APP led to the “amyloid hypothesis” of AD, showed that A is produced by cells throughout life, and that mutations in APP and, later, presenilin, increase A. Michael Wolfe and Selkoe identified presenilin as -secretase. His lab has applied similar approaches to alpha-synuclein, the key protein of Parkinson’s disease. Selkoe has focused on translating his discoveries on the cause and mechanism of Alzheimer’s disease into therapeutic approaches, and his findings have provided the underpinnings and rationale of numerous disease-modifying trials currently underway worldwide. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and Association of American Physicians and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was the principal founding scientist of Athena Neurosciences, and is now a founding director of Prothena Biosciences.

Assistant Professor, Department of Immunology
Biography

Senior Scientist, Lead Generation
Joe is a Senior Research Scientist within the Cellular Assay development team in Discovery Sciences at AstraZeneca. He is responsible for generating cell-based assays for HTS screening, SAR profiling and mode of action studies across various therapeutic areas.

Principal Investigator
Jason Sheltzer is a Fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where his lab uses CRISPR to investigate the genetic and chromosomal differences between normal cells and cancer cells.

Professor
Dr. Shirtliff is a Professor in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis in the School of Dentistry and the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Dr. Shirtliff began his biofilm infection training at the University of Texas Medical Branch in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. He received his PhD in 2001 with his thesis titled "Staphylococcus aureus: Roles in Osteomyelitis”. He then traveled to the Center for Biofilm Engineering in Montana as a postdoctoral fellow to continue his biofilm research using ‘omics analyses on in vitro biofilms and animal models to study biofilm-related diseases. Dr. Shirtliff became an Assistant Research Professor in 2003 in the Department of Microbiology and later that year accepted a position as a tenure track Assistant Professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore. Since arriving in Maryland, Dr. Shirtliff continues his research and teaching interests in host pathogen interactions, biofilm infections, and treatment and prevention of biofilm infections and was promoted to Full Professor with tenure in 2016. As an indication of his expertise on the subjects of microbes and their relation to infectious disease and pathogenesis, he has orally presented at over 150 national and international meetings/seminars. He has also authored over 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers, book chapters, and published abstracts and 6 patents on pathogenic microbes and the chronic diseases that they cause. He has obtained over $8 million from state, national (NIH and DOD), and international funding agencies in the past 10 years and has over 25 years of experience in ‘omics analysis, microbiology (with emphasis on biofilm formation of microbes), immunology, and using animal infection models that mimic clinical infectious diseases. Dr. Shirtliff has served on 40 graduate committees and was the primary advisor on 13 graduate students committees (10 PhD, 3 Masters). He has also mentored five postdoctoral fellows, three of which have progressed to faculty positions at other institutions.

Sadly, we have learned that Mark Shirtliff, a remarkable antibacterial scientist, teacher, and educator has passed away. We extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends, and the scientific community.

Associate Director and Group Leader, Oncology Medicinal Chemistry
Biography

Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
Dr. Gustavo Silva is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Duke University. Dr. Silva earned his BS, Lic, and PhD from the University of São Paulo, followed by a post-doctoral training at New York University, where he held a joint position as the Proteomics Core Manager in the Department of Biology. His group investigates a variety of pathways relevant to cellular response to stress, at the molecular and at the systems level. These pathways are regulated by protein ubiquitination, and his goal is to elucidate their function in cellular physiology, resistance to stress, and diseases. Beyond the canonical role of ubiquitin in protein degradation, his work currently focuses on a novel pathway of translation control mediate by K63 ubiquitination of ribosomes during oxidative stress. Dr. Silva research has been supported by NIH and NSF awards and the multi-disciplinary nature of his research allowed him to collaborate with academic researchers and biotech companies through research grants and NIH Small Business Innovation Research awards.

FM Kirby Neurobiology Center, Boston Children’s Hospital
Bhagat is a research fellow in Clifford Woolf’s lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Bhagat holds a CIHR fellowship from Canada and is bestowed as a ‘Bisby fellow’. His work is focused on understanding and identifying the cellular and molecular mechanisms of axonal regeneration and chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). Bhagat is leading efforts in the lab to identify novel therapeutic targets for both CIPN and CNS injuries utilizing high throughput phenotypic assays in induced human neurons (sensory, motor and cortical). Bhagat completed his PhD in Neurosciences at University of Calgary, Canada and studied peripheral nerve regeneration and diabetic neuropathy. Bhagat has published more 17 publications in peer-reviewed journals including Brain, Cell reports, and Journal of Neuroscience. Earlier, Bhagat worked in drug discovery research at Lupin for 3 years as a Research Scientist. Bhagat has presented at several scientific conferences as an invited speaker and has received research grants from Boston children’s Hospital and Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center.

Senior Scientist, Discovery Chemistry
Biography

Investigator III, Bacteriology Lead Discovery, Infectious Diseases
David A. Six, PhD is a Lab Head and Project Team Leader in the Bacteriology Lead Discovery Group in the NIBR Infectious Diseases Area. David leads multidisciplinary antibiotic discovery teams targeting multidrug resistant Gram-negative pathogens. The outer membrane permeability barrier and efflux are major challenges in developing novel agents with activity against Gram-negative pathogens. He leads several exploratory projects aimed at targets necessary for the formation and maintenance of the Gram-negative outer membrane permeability barrier. Notably, he has utilized novel technologies to create an internal platform to better characterize compound penetration and accumulation in bacteria. Prior to joining Novartis in 2010, David was a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Biochemistry at the Duke University School of Medicine where he characterized lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis, transport, and modification pathways in a variety of Gram-negative pathogens. He also led collaborations with the Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative and the NIH Glue Grant for LipidMAPS. David earned his MS and PhD in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego and BS in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Vice President, Global Research and Development Leader, Hepatitis, Alios BioPharma Inc., part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies
Biography

Professor and Director
Dr. Snyder earned his MD and his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. He completed residencies in pediatrics and neurology at Children's Hospital-Boston, Harvard Medical School and postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School. In 1992, Dr. Snyder was appointed an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School and was promoted to assistant professor in 1996. He is regarded as one of the fathers of the stem cell field, having identified over 2 decades ago that cells that came to be called stem cells were a source of neural plasticity. He was the first to demonstrate that non-hematopoietic stem cells could mediate cell and gene replacement, home to injury, and perform protective, trophic, pro-regenerative, and anti-inflammatory actions. He was the first to isolate human neural stem cells. In 2003, after 23 years at Harvard, Dr. Snyder was recruited to Sanford Burnham Medical Discovery Institute as professor and director of the Stem Cells and Regeneration program.

Chief Technology Officer
Colby Souders, graduated with his PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from Texas A&M and joined MassBiologics of the University of Massachusetts Medical School as a Scientist in the Product Discovery department before becoming Assistant Professor of Medicine. At MassBiologics, he worked to advance monoclonal antibodies for the prevention, treatment or diagnosis of various infectious and endogenous diseases, as well as develop related platform technologies to advance and expand the MassBiologics pipeline. In 2016 he joined the Kanyos Bio Protein Engineering team to develop therapeutics based on a novel antigen-specific immune tolerance platform. After completing multiple antibody discovery, affinity maturation and protein engineering campaigns at Kanyos, Colby joined Abveris Antibody in August of 2018 as Chief Technology Officer to usher in a new generation of antibody discovery tools and work to build a premium discovery engine with industry-leading timelines.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Alexander Statsyuk is an assistant professor at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy. He obtained his PhD degree at the University of Chicago in 2006, where he synthesized natural product Bistramide A and established its mode of action in cells. He then completed his postdoctoral work at UCSF, where he was working on the development of chemical cross-linkers to identify upstream kinases of protein phosphorylation sites. Since 2010 he has been running his independent research program aimed at discovering drug leads targeting degradation pathways such as ubiquitin proteasome system and autophagy. He is an author of 22 manuscripts, he filed 10 patent applications, and he is a recipient of Pew Scholar Award. Some of the technologies that he and his group have developed and patented include covalent fragments, and novel probes UbFluor to conduct HTS screens to discover E3 ligase inhibitors.

Management Support, Research & Development, Pharmaceuticals
Biography

Research Assistant Professor, Pharmacologyl
Dr. Ryan Strachan is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Strachan’s research program includes the discovery and exploitation of novel GPCR signal transduction mechanisms for biological and therapeutic insight. His current work focuses on the design of technologies to screen the transducerome and identify new chemical matter with tailored pharmacology.

Associate Principal Scientist and Head of the Pharmaceutical NMR Lab in Preclinical Sciences
Dr. Su is an Associated Principle Scientist and Head of the Pharmaceutical NMR lab of drug products at Merck & Co. (West Point, PA). His work covers characterizations of small molecule and biological drugs in formulation development, and mechanistic investigations of pharmaceutically interesting biomacromolecules. His recent studies focus on elucidating the structure basis of stability-related events in solid dosages and sterile formulations by utilizing advanced solid-state NMR techniques including Dynamic Nuclear Polarization and proton detection under ultrafast spinning. Dr. Su has received postdoctoral training with Prof. Robert G. Griffin at Massachusetts Institute of Technology after his PhD at Iowa State University with Prof. Mei Hong. He currently serves in the Advisory Board for Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry and as an Editor of Amino Acids. He actively chairs NMR sessions in scientific conferences of NMR, biophysics and pharmaceutical sciences. In the past few years, Dr. Su has contributed over 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals and frequently given podium presentations and invited seminars.

Vice President, Business Development
Tim has been involved in multiple aspects of drug discovery and development in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the U.S. for more than 15 years, leading discovery and pharmacology teams in a variety of therapeutic areas (e.g., oncology, autoimmune, inflammatory, metabolic and CNS diseases) as well as being involved in groups focused on the external identification of novel technologies and assets suitable for in-licensing and/or acquisition.
Prior to joining Arcus, Tim was a Senior Director in the External R&D Innovation (ERDI) group at Pfizer where he focused on identifying new Immuno-Oncology opportunities across all therapeutic modalities, as well as managing the global alliances with Servier and Cellectis focused on the discovery and development of allogeneic CAR-T cell products. Before Pfizer, Tim was a Director in the New Frontier Science group at Takeda, where he primarily focused on identifying and funding very early-stage technologies being developed in academic settings to determine utility in accelerating drug discovery and development. Prior to Takeda, Tim held various scientific management roles, first at Tularik/Amgen and then as Director of Biology at ChemoCentryx. Tim holds a B.A. degree from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley where he trained in the laboratory of Dr. James Allison.

Senior Research Scientist I, Center for Development of Therapeutics
Thomas Sundberg is a Senior Research Scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The focus of his research at the Broad Institute is identification and therapeutic development of small molecules that enhance anti-inflammatory functions of innate immune cells as potential first-in-class therapies for immunological and inflammatory disorders. Sundberg completed his PhD in chemical biology at the University of Michigan where he studied apoptotic signaling in T lymphocytes. He joined the Broad Institute upon completion of an American Cancer Society funded post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University in 2012 and was selected as an Exceptional Performer during the Broad Institute’s 2012-2013 performance management cycle.

Instructor, Infectious Diseases
Dr. Surana is an Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He received his MD/PhD at Washington University in St. Louis, where his doctoral research combined bacterial genetics, protein structure–function studies, and microbial pathogenesis to characterize protein secretion pathways critical for interactions between the human commensal Haemophilus influenzae and the host. He subsequently received clinical training in pediatric infectious diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital. His current research integrates gnotobiotic mouse models, microbiology, immunology, and bioinformatics to understand how the microbiome influences host physiology. He recently developed a novel platform of microbe–phenotype triangulation for identifying specific bacteria within the microbiota that are causally related to a phenotype of interest. As part of this work, he discovered a new bacterial species that protects against colitis, and this organism is now being developed in collaboration with industry as a potential therapeutic for inflammatory diseases. Dr. Surana is now using this platform to identify commensal bacteria that protect against various pathogens.

Director of Biology
Holly Sutterlin, PhD is a microbial geneticist specializing in the discovery and development of novel antibacterials. Before joining Prokaryotics, Holly served as a disease area biologist in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Merck & Co., where her efforts focused on antibacterial target identification and validation as well as lead compound identification and development. She has experience with both synthetic small molecule and natural product pipelines geared toward discovery of new antimicrobials to combat multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. Holly received her PhD in 2014 from Princeton University, where she studied Escherichia coli cell envelope biogenesis in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas J. Silhavy. She was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, which funded three years of her graduate work. Holly graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Duke University in 2008.

Director, Strategic Product Development, Head of Neurodegenerative and Infectious Diseases
Ms. Tamir is the Head of Neurodegenerative and Infectious Diseases in Karyopharm Therapeutics in Newton, MA. She joined Karyopharm more than 6.5 years ago and has successfully led a broad array of projects in small molecule drug discovery from compound structure activity relationship evaluations, through primary pharmacology and toxicokinetic evaluations, up to IND readiness. Her group has been working on drug development of novel treatments for Crohn, NASH, ALS, MS, ALS, DMD, Rett syndrome, Lupus, and anti-viral such as Influenza, HCV and HIV. The neurodegenerative diseases program (focusing on ALS, DMD, TBI and additional conditions) That Ms. Tamir led at Karyopharm from hypothesis to the IND readiness stage, resulted in a lucrative agreement for Biogen to acquire the program that was announced this past January. Ms. Tamir is serving as a member in the ASENT [American Society for Experimental Neurotherapeutics] Program Committee. Prior to that, Ms. Tamir studied Nutrition and Psychology in Israel and between 1995 to 2007 was a Senior Lecturer in Reidman College, Jerusalem-Tel Aviv, Israel.

Director of Preclinical Development, Cidara Therapeutics Antibacterial Discovery and Development
Dr. Levin received his Ph.D. in Bacteriology from the University of Maryland, College park, in 1997. During his post-doctoral training he studied the regulation of capsule expression in Streptococcus pyogenes at the Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School. Subsequently he has worked on early-stage anti-infectives programs for multiple pharmaceutical companies. These efforts include antimicrobials against both bacterial and viral pathogens using multiple therapeutic approaches (small molecule, immune-based, alternative strategies).

Herbert Irving Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Director of Clinical Informatics, Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center
Dr. Nicholas Tatonetti is assistant professor of biomedical informatics in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics, Systems Biology, and Medicine and is Director of Clinical Informatics at the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University. He received his PhD from Stanford University where he focused on the development of novel statistical and computational methods for observational data mining. He applied these methods to drug safety surveillance and the discovery of dangerous drug-drug interactions. His lab at Columbia is focused on expanding upon his previous work in detecting, explaining, and validating drug effects and drug interactions from large-scale observational data. Widely published in both clinical and bioinformatics, Dr. Tatonetti is passionate about the integration of hospital data (stored in the electronic health records) and high-dimensional biological data (captured using next-generation sequencing, high-throughput screening, and other "omics" technologies). Dr. Tatonetti has been featured by the New York Times, Genome Web, and Science Careers. His work has been picked up by the mainstream and scientific media and generated thousands of news articles.

CMO & Executive Vice President, R&D
Rebecca Taub, MD has served as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President, Research & Development, and as a member of Madrigal’s Board of Directors, since July 2016. Previously, Dr. Taub served as Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the Board of Directors of privately-held Madrigal Pharmaceuticals, Inc. from inception through its merger with Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp. Prior to joining Madrigal, Dr. Taub served as Senior Vice President, Research and Development of VIA Pharmaceuticals from 2008 to 2011 and as Vice President, Research, Metabolic Diseases at Hoffmann-La Roche from 2004 to 2008. In those positions, Dr. Taub oversaw clinical development and drug discovery programs in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases including the conduct of a series of Phase I and II proof of conduct clinical trials. Dr. Taub led drug discovery including target identification, lead optimization and advancement of preclinical candidates into clinical development. From 2000 through 2003, Dr. Taub worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and DuPont Pharmaceutical Company, in a variety of positions, including Executive Director of CNS and metabolic diseases research. Before becoming a pharmaceutical executive, Dr. Taub was a tenured Professor of Genetics and Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Taub is the author of more than 120 research articles. Before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Taub served as an Assistant Professor at the Joslin Diabetes Center of Harvard Medical School, Harvard University and an associate investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Taub received her MD from Yale University School of Medicine and B.A. from Yale College.

Professor of Molecular Virology, Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
Dr. Tavis earned his PhD in molecular biology from Penn State in 1990 and did postdoctoral studies with Dr. Don Ganem at the University of California, San Francisco. He has been at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine since 1994 and is now a Professor of Molecular Virology. His lab has focused on HBV since its inception and is currently pursuing basic biochemistry and antiviral drug discovery for the viral ribonuclease H. Additional interests include HCV genetics and anti-herpesvirus drug discovery. He has served terms on an American Cancer Society peer review panel and the Society’s Council on Extramural Grants, and on the NIH Virology B study section. He is currently a member of the Governing Board for the ICE-HBV consortium seeking to guide evidence-based efforts to cure HBV, chairs the Scientific Advisory Council for the annual International HBV molecular Biology meeting, and is co-director of the Saint Louis University Drug Discovery and Development Group.

Associate Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry
Dr. Tepe has over 20 years experience in academic drug discovery. Research in his lab is primarily focused on the synthesis and use of natural products and their analogues to modulate proteasome activity. By developing new synthetic methodologies, drug-like derivatives of natural products are prepared and interrogated for their clinical significance in vitro, cell culture and animal models. For his academic drug discovery efforts, he received the American Cancer Research Scholar award, Senior Award from the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation in 2008, and Multiple Myeloma senior award in 2010, and the International Myeloma Senior Award in 2013. In addition to his academic drug discovery efforts he served as co-Founder and Vice President of Research of TCH Pharmaceuticals (Ann Arbor, MI). More recently, research in the Tepe laboratory has been focused on enhancing proteasome activity by small molecules, as a means to target the toxic signaling of over-expressed intrinsically disordered proteins found in cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Hit-to-lead efforts of one class of proteasome enhancers developed by the Tepe lab has resulted in a lead molecule currently pursued in a proof-of-concept canine clinical trial to treat histiocytic sarcoma. A second, different class of proteasome activators was recently developed but still requires hit-to-lead optimization.

Vice President
Dr. Testa has 20 years of experience with a diverse multi-disciplinary background spanning chemical biology to microbiology. At Cūrza he leads all biological/biochemical evaluation for the CZ-02 program, a new class of antibiotics selectively targeting an un-drugged site of the bacterial ribosome. Dr. Testa is intimately involved in the conception of novel chemotypes for antibacterial development that have led to establishment of proof-of-concept in in vivo animal models of infection. He is also a core member of the Curza team that determines project progression, timelines and overall direction of all programs. Prior experience includes development of an antibacterial discovery and development platform targeting the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway and developing novel diagnostic tools and bioassays for a wide variety of therapeutic indications.

Director, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology; Professor of Internal Medicine
Dr. Neuschwander-Tetri has a longstanding interest in mechanisms of hepatocellular injury and the pathogenesis of NASH. A graduate of the University of Oregon, he completed medical school at Yale University and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He completed training in gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) where he was actively engaged in research at the UCSF Liver Center Lab with Monty Bissell, Joseph Roll, Scott Friedman and Jackie Maher. In 1991 he joined the faculty at Saint Louis University with Bruce Bacon and has conducted basic research in the areas of pancreatic fibrogenesis and mouse models of NASH. He is now the Division Director and oversees the GI and Hepatology Clinical Trials Unit at Saint Louis University. He is an active member of the NIDDK-supported NASH Clinical Research Network (NASH CRN) and the Liver Forum, an international collaborative group focused on clinical trial design for NASH therapeutics and understanding the regulatory challenges to bringing NASH therapeutics to patients. He continues to have a strong focus on pathogenic mechanisms of NASH and how an understanding of these mechanisms can predict therapeutic approaches to prevent and treat this disease.

CMO
Biography

Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery
Dr. Alex Rojas Bie Thomsen is a Danish Scientist who holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry, M.Sc. in Human Biology, and PhD. in Molecular Pharmacology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The majority of Alex’ research has been focused on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and how this family of cell membrane proteins may be used as drug targets to treat a variety of diseases. Dr. Thomsen has performed research in several different world-leading laboratories including Edward M. Brown’s lab at Harvard Medical School, which Alex visited during his Ph.D. studies, and Nobel Laureate Professor Robert J. Lefkowitz’ lab at Duke University where Alex was a postdoctoral fellow. Alex also has research experience outside of academia from employment in the biotech startup company INAGEN Aps, as well as in the pharmaceutical company LEO Pharma A/S with which he collaborated with during his Ph.D. studies. Very recently, Alex was recruited by Columbia University as an assistant professor where he will continue his research on endosomal GPCR signaling, which is a phenomenon he discovered and characterized during his postdoctoral training at Duke University. During his short career, Alex has published several papers in world leading scientific journals such as PNAS and Cell, and has been the recipient of several awards including the Sapere Aude: Young Elite Researcher Award.

Chair, Department of Pharmacology
Andrew Thorburn is Professor and Chair of the department of Pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The Thorburn lab’s research focuses on understanding autophagy’s roles in cell death and cancer therapy. He is the author of more than 140 scientific publications and has held multiple grants from the NIH and other agencies.

Associate Professor
I studied for a PhD in developmental biology at the University of Edinburgh in the MRC Reproductive Biology Unit. After completing my PhD I moved to Leeds and worked as a PDRA studying the function of growth factor receptors in bladder cancer. In 2010 I set up two facilities in Leeds - a siRNA screening facility and a facility to produce non-antibody binding proteins, which led to the development of Affimers. In 2015 I became a University Academic Fellow and in 2018 became an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds to continue the exploitation of isolating Affimers for studying protein function in disease.

Principal Research Scientist
Medha Tomlinson received her doctorate in mass spectrometry from the University of Cincinnati and completed her post-doctoral work in protein characterization with Professor Charles Wilkins at the University of California Riverside. She joined BASF/Abbott and worked on supporting small molecule projects and her role subsequently expanded to support Biologics programs. She led a group supporting antigen purification and characterization and currently leads the Biologics Protein Purification group at Abbvie within Global Protein Sciences supporting antigen and fusion protein purification for all therapeutic areas.

Associate Area Head & Collection Manager, Chemistry, Fundacion MEDINA
Associate Area Head-Chemistry & Collection Manager at Fundacion MEDINA. With more than twenty-three years of Research & Development experience including the management of multidisciplinary teams in international (Merck & Co, VLT BioPharma) pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. International experience in the design, development and supervision of automated chemical extraction techniques for microbial fermentations, compound management of synthetic compounds and natural products, isolation and structural elucidation of natural products, in vitro (target-based; cell- based) and in vivo (drosophila) HTS screening, cytotoxicity evaluation, in vitro P450 induction on HTS culture cell lines, biochemical evaluation of mitochondrial respiratory chain inhibitors. Currently leading, as Collection Manager, the Natural Products libraries management and generation from microbial extracts and plants at Fundación MEDINA (Granada, Spain), and is participating in the chemical characterization of collections of extracts and the isolation and identification of active compounds in the areas of Cancer, Antibacterials, Antifungals, Antimalarials, Tuberculosis and Neuroprotection. Academic Profile: Dr. Tormo has supervised 7 MS Thesis and (2009, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017). A PhD Thesis in 2010 in the Autonomic University of Madrid and is currently directing three PhD Thesis in the University of Granada. As professor of Chemical Biotechnology in the Internationally awarded ALITER School of Master Degrees (Madrid Excellence) along 7 promotions and, currently, in the University of Granada School of Master Degrees as Coordinator of Natural Products Chemistry & Bio-transformation in the Master for Bio-Enterprises along 7 promotions, with collaborations in the Microbiology and Biotechnology Masters of University of Granada, and the Blue-Bio-Technology Master of the Catholic University of Valencia.

Professor, Chemistry
BSc, 1982, University of Birmingham, England
PhD, 1986, University of Birmingham, England
SERC-NATO Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, National Research Council Canada, 1986-1988

CEO
Dr. Traber is president emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine, where he was chief executive officer from 2003 to 2008. From 2000 to 2003, he was senior vice president of clinical development and medical affairs and chief medical officer of GlaxoSmithKline plc. Dr. Traber served as chief executive officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and was chair of the Department of Internal Medicine and chief of gastroenterology for the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Traber has also managed a molecular biology research laboratory and published over 100 articles of original research, reviews and book chapters. Dr. Traber received his MD from Wayne State School of Medicine, a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan, and a certificate in medical leadership from Wharton Business School.

Senior Vice President, Research and Development
James Trager joined Nkarta as Senior Vice President of R&D in 2016 and leads all discovery and development efforts. James is deeply versed in the development and application of cellular therapies for cancer. He previously served as Vice President of Research and Development at Dendreon, where he was responsible for product development, clinical immunology, and analytical development, supporting the late stage development of sipuleucel-T through clinical study, approval, and commercialization. Prior to Dendreon, James was a Senior Scientist at Geron; he was part of the team that cloned human telomerase, and later established a Quality Control function for the manufacture and clinical development of a telomerase inhibitor. James is a graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe New Mexico; and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic. He received his doctorate in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, where he performed mechanistic studies on the src oncogene.

Scientist
Sarah Triest obtained her engineering degree in Applied Biological Sciences in 2009 and a Ph.D. in 2014, both at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium. During her Ph.D. in Jan Steyaert’s lab she implemented yeast display to discover Nanobodies stabilizing transient protein-protein interactions, including GPCR - G protein complexes. Immediately after obtaining her Ph.D. she started her industrial career and was involved in the startup of Confo Therapeutics. Until today she is a scientist leading Confobody discovery, enabling active state stabilized GPCR screening and drug discovery for novel agonist drugs.

Global Head, Lead Discovery, Discovery Sciences
Peter leads the Discovery Sciences Chemistry, Screening, Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology, and Small Molecule Protein Science groups located in Beerse, Val del Reuil, Toledo, Spring House, and La Jolla. He is a member of the Discovery Sciences Leadership Team and is based in Spring House, PA. Prior to joining Janssen Pharmaceuticals in 2014, Peter worked for 10+ years at GlaxoSmithKline. He joined the company in 2003 as Director of Enzymology & Mechanistic Pharmacology (2003-2008), and became Head of Biology for the Cancer Epigenetics Discovery Performance Unit in Oncology R&D (2008-2014). During his tenure in the Cancer Epigenetics DPU, the group progressed multiple first-in-class small-molecule epigenetic agents into oncology clinical trials. Dr. Tummino received his PhD from the Department of Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan in 1992. Following completion of a postdoctoral fellowship at Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis, Dr. Tummino held positions of increasing responsibility at Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis, AstraZeneca, and Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Over the course of his career, Dr. Tummino has worked in anti-infective, metabolic disease, and oncology preclinical drug discovery. The focus of his research has been the identification, characterization, and development of small molecule agents as novel therapeutics.

Vice President, Translational Sciences
Dr. Turner is a leader in the field of stable isotope research and development of novel tools for drug discovery and development. Prior to joining Pliant as senior director of technology, Dr. Turner was the vice president of research and development at KineMed Inc. where he led the technology development and biomarker discovery efforts in fibrosis, atherosclerosis and metabolic disease. He has co-authored more than 50 publications and holds several patents in the areas of metabolic fluxes and stable isotopes methods. Dr. Turner has been awarded three NIH grants to fund his research into novel in vivo for biomarker discovery and serves on the editorial board of Biomarker Insights. Dr. Turner received his PhD in 2002 in Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology from the University of California at Berkeley. His graduate research focused on the development and application of stable isotope methodology to the study of adipose tissue dynamics in the ob/ob mouse.

Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Uger is responsible for developing and implementing Trillium’s scientific direction, and oversees both internal product development and external research discovery programs. He also acts as the Company’s scientific liaison with respect to global collaborations with academic and hospital research scientists. Dr. Uger was previously Vice-President, Research & Development at Trillium Therapeutics (private company). He joined Trillium from Aventis Pasteur where he was a Senior Research Scientist involved in cancer vaccine research. He received his PhD in immunology from the University of Toronto.

Programme Manager
Dr. Sree Vadlamudi is a medicinal and computational chemist by training with over 14 years’ experience in the Biotechnology industry. He has a track record in leading projects from inception to lead generation and optimisation and is a named author on multiple patents and publications. Sree joined e-therapeutics in 2013 as a Programme Manager to help in the implementation of the network-driven approach to drug discovery. He is responsible for overseeing chemistry and programme management activities to enable delivery of multiple projects. Sree has also gained commercial experience in managing alliances, collaborations and business development activities in biotech and CRO environments.

CSO
Dr. Vaillant has more than 15 years of experience in the fields of nucleic acid chemistry, virology and drug development and is the discoverer of Replicor’s NAP technology. He has authored numerous publications and patents on the use of NAPs in various infectious diseases. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Montreal Neurological Institute and holds a PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Ottawa.

Principal Scientist, Virology
Mike Vaine is a virologist who has focused his career on the development of therapies to prevent and treat viral infections that affect the lives of millions globally. Mike conducted his doctoral work identifying methods to elicit better antibody responses to enhance vaccine protection against HIV. He has since developed novel viral vectors to prevent infection by vaccination and studied small molecule therapies to treat chronic infections. Mike currently investigates small molecule therapies to treat Hepatitis B Virus with the goal of providing a functional cure without lifelong treatment.

Vice President, Cancer Immunotherapy
Bahram (Bob) Valamehr is the Vice President of Cancer Immunotherapy at Fate Therapeutics, overseeing the company’s immuno-oncology and pluripotent stem cell programs, including efforts to develop novel pluripotent cell strategies to create “off-the-shelf” cell-based cancer immunotherapeutics. Previously, Dr. Valamehr has played key scientific roles at Amgen, the Center for Cell Control (a NIH Nanomedicine Development Center) and the Broad Stem Cell Research Center developing novel methods to control pluripotency, to modulate stem cell fate including hematopoiesis and to better understand cellular signaling pathways associated with cancer. He has co-authored numerous studies and patents related to stem cell biology, oncology and materials science. Dr. Valamehr received his PhD from the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA, his MBA from Pepperdine University and his BS from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA.

Senior Project Leader
DVH is a senior project leader at Ablynx with over 10 years of experience. Large part of her work was focused on leading multiple technology development projects. Then a switch was made to a late stage development project currently in phase2b testing and recently she assumed leadership for a project progressing towards clinical testing with a strong technological aspect.

Senior Scientific Researcher, Antibody Engineering
I have a Master’s Degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and have been working in antibody discovery for ~16 years with 12 years at Genentech Inc. as a Senior Scientific Researcher. I have worked on all sort of therapeutic antibody projects including antibody development against hard to express proteins.

Associate Research Fellow, Hit Discovery and Lead Profiling Group
Fabien Vincent, PhD, is an Associate Research Fellow in the Hit Discovery and Lead Profiling Group at Pfizer. His laboratory provides molecular pharmacology support for the small molecule project portfolios of the Immunology & Inflammation research unit and the Centers for Therapeutic Innovation. This work includes designing hit identification strategies and screening funnels, developing assays for high throughput screening as well as additional assays to elucidate the structure activity relationship of active compounds, understand their mechanism of action and facilitate translation to pre-clinical models. His main research interests are centered on improving the translation of discovery research to patients and specifically include phenotypic screening and atypical molecular mechanisms of action. Fabien Vincent led a team of Pfizer scientists in an analysis of how best to approach phenotypic screening, and specifically how to design the optimal phenotypic assays, those which can best predict compounds and mechanisms that will be effective in patients. Fabien Vincent received a Diplôme d’Ingénieur in organic chemistry from CPE Lyon (France) before conducting graduate research in the fields of chemical biology and enzymology in the laboratory of Pr. Harold Kohn at the University of Houston. He later became a post-doctoral fellow in chemical biology at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego.

Group Leader, Senior Investigator
Mike Visser is a group leader at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA. In this role, he applies his skills as a medicinal chemist in multi-disciplinary team settings in the search for new therapeutics to treat human disease. He received his undergraduate chemistry degree from Syracuse University in 1992 working in the lab of Professor Donald Dittmer. In 1997, he received a PhD from Boston College, working in the lab of Professor Amir Hoveyda in the areas of asymmetric catalysis, metathesis and organic synthesis. He then was a post-doctoral fellow in Professor Samuel Danishefsky’s lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center contributing to the synthesis of the core of the N-linked glycopeptide high Mannose. In 1999 Mike began his industrial career at Pfizer and later moved to Novartis in 2007. Mike has conducted research toward new therapeutics for treating cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and infectious diseases. He has worked on targeted kinase inhibitor projects for the treatment of cancer, including efforts which identified the Protein Kinase C inhibitor, LXS196, which is currently being evaluated in patients. Mike’s current research is focused on small molecule approaches to harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer.

Professor, Department of Pediatric Oncology
Dr. Walensky graduated as valedictorian from Princeton University in 1990, majoring in Chemistry (laboratory of Edward Taylor, PhD) and receiving a Certificate in Science Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He went on to receive his MD and PhD (laboratory of Solomon Snyder, MD) from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1997. Dr. Walensky trained in pediatrics at the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics. He completed a fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Children’s Hospital Boston, where his postdoctoral research in cancer chemical biology was jointly mentored by Gregory Verdine, PhD of Harvard University and the late Stanley Korsmeyer, MD of Dana-Farber. Dr. Walensky joined the Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School faculty as Instructor of Pediatrics in 2003, founded his independent research laboratory in 2006, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011. Dr. Walensky is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including a Stand Up to Cancer Innovative Research Grant, an NIH Director’s Transformative RO1 Award, a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences, a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar Award, a Harvard Medical School Young Mentor Award, and most recently, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Morse Award for Research Excellence, the Samuel Rosenthal Prize for Excellence in Academic Pediatrics, the E. Mead Johnson Award for Pediatric Research, and an NCI Outstanding Investigator R35 Award.

Dr. Walensky’s work contributed to the founding of Aileron Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. The company’s first-in-class stapled peptide drug to reactivate p53 in cancer, developed based on Dr. Walensky’s research, is currently being evaluated in Phase I clinical trials.

Senior Research Scientist III, High Throughput Screening
Biography

Professor, Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology
Bonnie Ann Wallace is Professor of Molecular Biophysics in the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at Birkbeck College, University of London. She obtained her PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and did postdoctoral work (as a Jane Coffin Childs fellow) at Harvard and at the MRC Lab of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. She was an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Columbia University, before moving to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Biophysics. She moved her lab permanently to London following a sabbatical visit (as a Fogarty Fellow) to Birkbeck. She was the first recipient of the Dayhoff Award of the U.S. Biophysical Society (for the best young female biophysicist in America), and received the Irma T. Hirschl Award, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and was previously named one of the dozen top young scientists in America by Fortune Magazine. She received the 2010 AstraZeneca Award from the Biochemical Society and the 2009 Interdisciplinary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry and last year was recently elected an Honorary Member of the British Biophysical Society and a Fellow of The (U.S.) Biophysical Society. Her principal research interests are in the structure and function of voltage-gated sodium channels, and the development of new methods and bioinformatics tools for characterising proteins.

Associate Professor, Cancer Biology
Dr. Y. Alan Wang received his PHD from Boston University School of Medicine in the field of Biochemistry and conducted postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Phil Leder at Harvard Medical School. After a period working at Wayne State University and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, he joined MD Anderson Cancer Center as Associate Professor and supervise a team of 20 research personnel and conduct cancer research using various GEM models. He has published over 60 manuscripts on immune suppressive myeloid cells, oncogenomics and functional geneomics, cancer stem cell niches and tumor microenvironment, and synthetic lethality. In addition, he is currently developing chemical probes and therapeutic antibodies against targets identified through his cutting-edge research.

Director, Discovery Biology Neuroscience IMED Biotech Unit
I got my bachelor’s degree in biochemistry at Wuhan University in 2000 and my PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology at University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 2006. I then joined Wyeth Discovery Neuroscience in Princeton NJ and focused on novel target identification and validation for psychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia. With Pfizer’s acquisition of Wyeth in 2009 I moved to the Neuroscience Research Unit of Pfizer and continued my research on psychiatric drug discovery. In 2015, I moved to the Neuroscience IMED Biotech Unit of AstraZeneca in Waltham as Director Discovery Biology. Since then I have focused on the drug discovery of neurodegenerative and neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, neuropathy, and refractory epilepsy.

Senior Scientist, Department of Immunology
Biography

Director, Pharmacology and QC Cell-Based Assay Group
Biography

Director, Biology and Biostatistics
Dr. Holm Waters has more than 15 years of experience in the areas of CNS pharmacology and drug discovery, in the setting of collaborations with big pharmaceutical companies as well as academia, with a focus on computational biology applications and phenotypic profiling. Susanna holds an MD and a PhD in Pharmacology, and works as resident physician in psychiatry at the Sahlgrenska University hospital, Gothenburg. Susanna Holm Waters is a co-founder of Integrative Research Laboratories Sweden.

Resident Physician, Internal Medicine
Kipp Weiskopf, MD, PhD, is a resident physician in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. He completed his training in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Stanford University. His research focuses on the development of novel cancer immunotherapies, particularly those that activate innate immune cells to attack cancer. In the laboratory of Irving Weissman, MD, he studied the interaction between CD47 and SIRPα, which acts as a myeloid-specific immune checkpoint. He developed novel therapies that disrupt the CD47-SIRPa interaction and stimulate macrophage phagocytosis of cancer cells. He has over 10 patent applications related to this work and was a winner of the 2013 Collegiate Inventors Competition at the US Patent and Trademark Office. He is a co-Founder of Alexo Therapeutics, a biotech company formed to develop these therapeutics. He has also been the recipient of a Winston Churchill Scholarship, an NCI Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Fellowship, the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the Joanna M. Nicolay Melanoma Foundation Research Scholar Award.

Joseph C. Wenke, PhD arrived at the US Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio, TX as a National Research Council Postdoctoral fellow in 2003. The following year he accepted a position at ISR as a Research Physiologist and is now the manager for the Extremity Trauma & Regenerative Medicine Task Area. His primary research focus is improving outcomes of open fractures. Much of his previous the work has been focused on improving early therapies (e.g., wound irrigation techniques, negative pressure wound therapy and local delivery of antibiotics); current and future projects focus on regenerating bone in a contaminated bone defects and in polytrauma patients and targeted therapies for biofilm-related infections. Dr. Wenke spent the past six years as the government program manager for the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium (www.metrc.org), which is the largest orthopaedic trauma consortium ever. METRC has enrolled over 5,000 patients in prospective studies over the past four years. One of the main strengths of his research program is the ability to utilize or develop clinically-relevant orthopaedic trauma animal models to evaluate different therapies or develop clinical guidelines. Dr. Wenke received a Bachelor of Science from Baylor University in 1997 and a PhD from Texas A&M University in 2003. Skeletal muscle plasticity and injury was his main areas of research while in graduate school.

Professor, Center for Virology and Vaccine Research
Biography

Professor, Biochemistry
Dr. Whitty is Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Boston University, where he joined the faculty in 2008. He spent the previous 14 years at the biopharmaceutical company Biogen, most recently as Director of Physical Biochemistry, where he led a group responsible for the structural, biophysical and mechanistic study of drug targets and of protein and small molecule drug candidates. He obtained a BSc in Chemistry at King’s College, University of London, and a PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, after which he held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brandeis University with Professor William P. Jencks, before joining Biogen in 1993. His research has included elucidation of enzyme mechanisms and enzyme-inhibitor interactions, as well as mechanistic investigations of integrins and several cytokine and growth factor receptors. The two major focuses of his current research are the development of approaches for discovering small molecule inhibitors against protein-protein interaction targets, particularly using synthetic macrocyclic compounds, and the quantitative analysis of activation and signaling mechanism of growth factor receptors.

Associate Director, Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering
Trevor is Associate Director of Protein Sciences in the Department of Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering at MedImmune. In this role Trevor manages a team which is responsible for discovery of a variety of therapeutic biologic modalities to support Biologics Discovery projects. His previous positions include Head of Protein Sciences at Cambridge Antibody Technology and Biochemistry Team Leader at Roche Products Ltd working in the Cardiovascular, Respiratory and Virology therapy areas. Trevor holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Southampton and also an MBA from the University of Hertfordshire.

Senior Vice President, R&D
Dr. Willert joined Molecular Templates in 2011 and serves as SVP of R&D. Dr. Willert performed her post-doctoral research at the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine and holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Senior Scientist II, Discovery Chemistry and Technology
Biography

Principal Scientist
Andrew Wollacott, PhD, is currently a Principal Scientist at Visterra, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. He has over 15 years of experience in biotechnology and protein engineering and design research. At Visterra, Dr. Wollacott leads a research team developing computational methods to support discovery of novel therapeutic mAbs. Prior to Visterra, Dr. Wollacott was the Lead of Protein Design at Monsanto, working on the design and engineering of anti-herbicidal enzymes and protein-based insect toxins for crop protection. As a post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Wollacott worked with Dr. David Baker at the University of Washington on development of methods for de novo enzyme design. Dr. Wollacott is an inventor on multiple patents and has authored publications in top-tiered journals, including Nature and Nature Communications.

Investigator II, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology
Dr. Wong received her PhD in Cancer Immunology from the University of Toronto and completed her postdoctoral training under the mentorship of Dr. Glenn Dranoff at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Wong joined Novartis in 2015 where she leads exploratory research on the development of target identification for IO and the development of novel IO/targeted therapy combinations. Her research focus includes immune-metabolism and myeloid cell biology.

Director, Neuroscience Discovery Research
Steve is a Director in the Neuroscience Department at Amgen where he leads a team of scientists focused on discovering and developing therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. Over the last 25 years, Steve’s primary scientific focus has been Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Prior to joining Amgen, Steve worked at SmithKline Beecham where he and colleagues helped elucidate the mechanisms of abnormal protein aggregation, a common pathology across numerous neurodegenerative disorders. Steve has led drug development programs at all stages, from basic discovery to early clinical development and is currently the head of Amgen’s Alzheimer’s Discovery Research group.

Crystallography Lab Head, Principal Scientist, Structural and Molecular Sciences, Discovery Sciences
Dr. Huixian Wu received her Ph.D in Structural Biology and Chemistry from the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA) in the laboratory of Prof. Raymond C. Stevens. While in Stevens lab, Dr. Wu focused on G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) crystallography where she determined the crystal structures of several important human GPCRs, including the k-opioid receptor, metabotropic glutamate receptor, and smoothened receptor. After completing her Ph.D, Dr. Wu joined Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber’s laboratory in the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT (Cambridge, MA) for postdoctoral research, working on structure-based drug development (SBDD) targeting inflammatory bowel diseases. Currently, Dr. Wu is a Principal Scientist leading a Crystallography lab at Pfizer (Groton, CT). Her lab is supporting SBDD of diverse therapeutic targets across multiple disease areas in Pfizer

Senior Investigator, Office of Biotechnology Products
Dr. Wen Jin Wu earned his MD from Wannan Medical College, China and his PhD at Cornell University in 2002. After finishing his PhD, he continued working at Cornell University as a Research Associate and was recruited as a Principal Investigator (PI) in Division of Monoclonal Antibodies, Office of Biotechnology Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at FDA in 2004. In addition to his regulatory duty as a product quality reviewer, Dr. Wu has directed a research program focusing on investigating the roles of ErbB/HER family of receptor tyrosine kinases and Rho family GTPases in breast cancer progression, and ErbB2/HER2 targeted therapy with focusing on understanding the mechanisms of resistance and toxicity induced by therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates. He has published a number of papers in highly reputed journals, including Journal of Biological Chemistry, Nature, Cell, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, and Cancer Research, and has been invited to give talks in many national and international conferences.

Professor and Chair, Cancer Immunology and Virology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Professor, Neurology and Microbiology/Immunobiology
Kai W. Wucherpfennig is Chair of the Department of Cancer Immunology and Virology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology as well as Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He serves as the Co-leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. His research focuses on the mechanism of T cell mediated tumor immunity. He has been elected as a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (2006), the Henry Kunkel Society at Rockefeller University (2007) and as Fellow of the American Society for the Advancement of Science (2009). Dr. Wucherpfennig received a MD from the University of Göttingen in Germany, and did his postdoctoral training at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and at Harvard College. He has been a faculty member at the Dana-Farber since 1995.

Senior Principal Scientist, Biotherapeutics
Biography

Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology
Dr. Yang graduated with a combined MS/BS degrees in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in the laboratory of Alanna Schepartz where she developed tools to study protein folding and DNA-binding proteins. She earned her doctorate in Bio-Organic Chemistry with Peter G. Schultz at the University of California-Berkeley, where she studied the structure, function, and immunological evolution of catalytic antibodies. For post-doctoral training, she moved to the research group of Francis V. Chisari at The Scripps Research Institute and began studying hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus and in particular focused on engineering model systems for studying these two viral pathogens. Now, in her own research group at Harvard Medical School, she develops and applies chemical tools in order to understand the interactions between the host and virus that are responsible for productive replication.

Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology
Dr. Zhengmao Ye has been a Scientist in the Department of Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology at Genentech since 2014. As a trained immunologist, his group is mainly responsible for developing and executing high-throughput functional assay to screen and characterize biotherapeutics for cancer immunotherapy. Prior to joining Genentech, Zhengmao worked for GlaxoSmithKline for 4 years. There, he was project leader for a number of immunotherapy projects for HIV immunotherapy. He received his PhD in Immunology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Senior Principal Scientist, Richard T. Clark Fellow for Global Health, Infectious Diseases
Biography

Technical Pre-Sales, Life Sciences
Jane Yu, MD, PhD is a technical consultant for IBM Watson Health. With more than 25 years of experience spanning clinical medicine, biomedical research, and enterprise IT, Dr. Yu has led initiatives to implement clinical data warehouses, HPC, and innovative data science applications at healthcare and life science organizations. She specializes in precision medicine analytics and other data-intensive biomedical workloads. She holds an MD and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Professor, Department of Chemistry
Dr. Yudin received his undergraduate degree at Moscow State University in 1992. He subsequently worked in the laboratories of G. K. S. Prakash and the Nobel Laureate George A. Olah at USC, where he obtained his PhD in 1996. In 1998, following postdoctoral training in the laboratory of the Nobel Laureate K. Barry Sharpless at the Scripps Research Institute, Yudin started his independent career at the University of Toronto. He became an associate professor in 2002, which was followed by promotion to the rank of a full professor in 2007. Since January 2015, Professor Yudin has served as the Chair of the Board for Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry (a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry, U.K.). Over the years, Yudin has examined diverse research areas, ranging from the use of electrochemical energy to activate organic molecules to the use of catalysts to accelerate chemical transformations. Yudin’s recent awards include 2017 world-wide Novartis Chemistry Lectureship, 2017 Alfred Bader Award, 2015 Bernard Belleau Award (CSC), 2015 Chambers Lectureship (University of Rochester), 2011 Inaugural Inventor of the Year Award (University of Toronto), 2010 Royal Society of Canada Rutherford Memorial Medal. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Principal Scientist, Antibody Technology
Stefan Zahn joined Novo Nordisk A/S in 2001 and holds currently a Principal Scientist position in the Antibody & Automation Technology Department. He has been involved in the development of therapeutic antibodies for treatment of cancer, autoimmune diseases and haemophilia. Prior joining Novo Nordisk A/S he worked two years as a scientist in the Protein Sciences Department at Morphosys AG and spend 2½ years as a postdoctoral scientist in the Rheumatology Division at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Managing Director & Head of Biology
Guido Zaman is co-founder, Managing Director and Head of Biology of NTRC, a biotech company based in Oss, the Netherlands. NTRC (Netherlands Translational Research Center B.V.) translates novel biological concepts into new small molecule drug leads for cancer, immune oncology and Parkinson’s disease. Novel technology platforms developed to support these projects have been spun out as NTRC’s services platforms and are available worldwide. Guido worked for fifteen years at Organon, Schering-Plough and Merck, Sharp & Dohme (MSD) in Oss, where he led several multidisciplinary teams on kinases and GPCRs, and was Senior Director of Molecular Pharmacology. Guido received his PhD in Science from the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and worked for five years at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, before he moved to pharmaceutical industry in 1996. Guido Zaman is a named inventor on seven patents and (co-)author of more than seventy-five publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

CSO
Jim has 20 years’ experience contributing to numerous drug discovery projects, many of which have entered the clinic. Jim has supported drug discovery projects in roles ranging from computational chemist to project leader. He is currently CSO and co-founder of Visionary Pharmaceuticals where he created the computing platform that has been used to find and optimize multiple lead compounds. Prior to joining Visionary, he worked at Dart Neurosciences focusing on treatments to enhance memory; Mitsubishi Tanabe, treatments for inflammatory disorders; Sequenom, on target & lead identification, Incyte, on inflammatory disorders & cancer; and Celgene, on inflammatory disorders & cancer. Jim studied protein structure and biochemistry at the University of South Carolina under Dr Bruce Dunlap, followed by postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Research Institute with a focus on the structure and function of two-component phospho-signaling proteins.

Assistant Professor, Pharmacology and Chemical Biology
Dr. Cheng Zhang holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Structural Biology. He received his postdoctoral training in Dr. Brian Kobilka's lab at the Stanford University. During this period, Dr. Cheng Zhang published the first crystal structure of human protease-activated receptor 1 (PAR1) in complex with a new anti-thrombotic drug vorapaxar. He also solved the structure of the beta2-adrenergic receptor with the most widely used bronchodilator salmeterol in the treatment of asthma, and participated in the development of new allosteric modulators for the beta2-adrenergic receptor. He is currently leading a research group at the University of Pittsburgh to study the structure and pharmacology of a group of chemoattractant GPCRs as new targets for anti-inflammatory drugs, and further use the structural information to develop new therapeutics.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Medical Microbiology
I became interested in membrane proteins during my undergraduate studies in biochemistry at the University of Zurich and then joined Raimund Dutzler in 2008 for my PhD on structure and function of pentameric ligand gated ion channels using X-ray crystallography and electrophysiology. During this time, I have developed a strong interest in creating antibodies as tools for membrane proteins. In 2014, I joined Markus Seeger’s team at the University of Zurich as a postdoc to develop new antibody generation methods in the form of the Sybody and NestLink platforms.

CEO, Co-founder
Forge Therapeutics, biopharmaceutical company located in San Diego, is armed with a novel fragment-based chemistry platform from U.C. San Diego for the discovery of metalloenzyme-targeting therapeutics. Metalloenzymes are enzymes that require metal ions for their biological function. Estimates suggest >30% of known enzymes are metalloenzymes covering all major enzymes classes: oxidoreductases, transferases, hydrolases, lyases, isomerases, and ligases. Metalloenzymes utilize metal ions, such as zinc, iron, magnesium, manganese, and copper, to perform required catalytic functions. Forge’s platform called BLACKSMITH comprises a deep knowledge of metalloenzymes, bioinorganic and medicinal chemistry know-how, and a focused fragment library of proprietary metal-binding pharmacophores (MBPs) that provide selective & diverse chemical matter for novel inhibitor starting points. Forge has enlisted leading antibiotic drug developers, having over 200 years of collective antibiotic experience developing three different approved antibiotics, to guide its programs. To help advance compounds in an efficient cost-effective manner, Forge has formed a strategic alliance with leading preclinical drug discovery company Evotec AG.

Senior Scientist/Principal Investigator
From 2009 to present, Dr. Zurawski managed a laboratory in the Wound Infections Department (WID) at WRAIR. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland Dental School in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis. His laboratory utilizes the disciplines of genetics, biochemistry, cell biology and animal modeling in order to design and test novel antimicrobial strategies against MDR-ESKAPE pathogens. Specifically, he and his group have developed useful genetic tools to better understand the pathogenesis of Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella pneumoniae, which has led to the identification of new targets that can be exploited for drug design and therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. They also developed novel animal models in mice, rats, and swine that incorporate different infection sites, different drug deliveries, multiple endpoints, and bioluminescent bacteria to address the efficacy of any antimicrobial treatment. In addition to exploiting these models for his own research, Dr. Zurawski has ongoing extramural collaborations with industry, government, and academic partners to test their novel antibacterial strategies, where the animal models that were developed by his team provide crucial preclinical data on efficacy and toxicity. Dr. Zurawski has four patents on novel antibacterial approaches and has published over 30 papers on bacterial pathogens that cause wound infections and new treatments against these organisms. Dr. Zurawski received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD from the University of Vermont. After his thesis work on mechanisms of Salmonella pathogenesis, Dr. Zurawski did post-doctoral research at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences on novel effector proteins secreted by Shigella and was subsequently recruited by the WRAIR to develop Shigella vaccines.

Associate Director, Biology
Dr. Zuurmond is the Associate Director of Genome Engineering for Charles River in the Netherlands.
For more than a decade, she has been active in a CRO environment managing projects in the field of fibrosis, arthritis, metabolic syndrome, and central nervous system.
She joined Charles River in 2015 and initiated the implemented the CRISPR/Cas9 technology in the drug discovery and animal research models, creating knock-out and knock-in cell lines for in vitro drug discovery and the generation of novel transgenic mouse models.