Plenary Keynote Program
Join colleagues from around the world for the Discovery on Target Plenary Keynote Program. Bridging both halves of the event, it's the only time our whole community of drug discovery professionals assembles together to learn about big-picture perspectives,
innovative technologies, and thought-provoking trends from luminaries in the field.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19 | 11:00 AM - 12:35 PM
11:00 am Plenary Chairperson’s Remarks
An-Dinh Nguyen, Team Lead, Discovery on Target, Cambridge Healthtech Institute
11:05 Pirating Biology to Detect and Degrade Extracellular Proteins
James A. Wells, PhD, Professor, Departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco
In contrast to intracellular PROTACs, approaches to
degrade extracellular proteins are just emerging. I’ll describe our recent progress to harness natural mechanisms such as transmembrane E3 ligases to degrade extracellular proteins using fully genetically encoded bi-specific antibodies we call
AbTACs. We have also engineered a peptide ligase which can be tethered to cells to detect proteolysis events and target them with recombinant antibodies for greater selectivity for the tumor microenvironment.
11:50 Therapeutic Modalities for Neuroscience Diseases
Anabella Villalobos, PhD, Senior Vice President, Biotherapeutics & Medicinal Sciences, Biogen
Many effective medicines exist to treat neurological diseases, but medical need remains high. We have a unique multi-modality approach to discover novel therapies and our goal is to find the best modality regardless of biological target. With a multi-modality approach, we aim to expand target space, leverage synergies across modalities, and offer options to patients. Opportunities and challenges associated with small molecules, biologics, oligonucleotides, and gene therapy will be discussed.
12:35 pm Enjoy Lunch on Your Own
1:25 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing
James A. Wells, PhD, Professor, Departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco
Wells’s group pioneered the engineering of proteins, antibodies, and
small molecules that target catalytic, allosteric, and protein-protein interaction sites; technologies including protein phage display, alanine-scanning, engineered proteases for improved hydrolysis, bioconjugations, N-terminomics, disulfide “tethering”
(a novel site-directed fragment-based approach for drug discovery); and more recently an industrialized recombinant antibody production pipeline for the proteome. These led to important new insights into protease mechanisms, growth factor signaling,
hot-spots in protein-protein interfaces, role of caspases in biology, and more recently to determining how cell surfaces change in health and disease. His team was integral to several protein products, including Somavert for acromegaly, Avastin for
cancer, Lifitegrast for dry eye disease, and engineered proteases sold by Pfizer, Genentech, Shire and Genencor, respectively. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Science, American Association of Arts and Science, and the National
Academy of Inventors.
Anabella Villalobos, PhD, Senior Vice President, Biotherapeutics & Medicinal Sciences, Biogen
Prior to joining Biogen, Anabella was at Pfizer for 28 years where she was Vice President of Medicinal Synthesis Technologies and Neuroscience
Medicinal Chemistry. As the leader of several medicinal chemistry groups throughout her career at Pfizer, Anabella’s teams delivered >30 candidates which showed increased survival to the clinic. Anabella also championed new scientific directions
that have changed design practices in medicinal chemistry, such as the Central Nervous System Multi-Parameter Optimization (CNS MPO) design tool and a novel PET ligand design and discovery approach. Anabella obtained her BS in Chemistry at the University
of Panama and her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Kansas where she was a Fulbright-Hays Fellow. She was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University in synthetic organic chemistry for two years.