Drug Discovery to Development Innovation Forum Speakers
Alan Whitmore
Chief Scientific Officer
e-Therapeutics PLC
Alan Whitmore is Chief Scientific Officer at e-Therapeutics PLC. He moved from academia into biotech 12 years ago and has worked in both drug delivery and drug discovery.
Stephanos Ioannidis
Vice President, Head of Chemistry
H3 Biomedicine
Dr. Stephanos Ioannidis obtained his B.Sc. at King's College London in chemistry and biochemistry before moving to Imperial College London
Alister Campbell
Global Head of Application Science
Dotmatics
Alister Campbell is the Global Head of Application Science at Dotmatics.
Christopher J Tame
Senior Principle Scientist
BenevolentAI
Chris is a medicinal chemist working across Target ID and early discovery chemistry at Benevolent AI.
Davide Gianni
Associate Director
Astrazeneca
Davide Gianni currently leads the Functional Genomics team in Discovery Sciences (AZ) in Cambridge UK.
Javier Terriente
CSO
ZeClinics
Javier is Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and co-founder at ZeClinics. He is an expert in zebrafish biology and the exploitation of this animal model for drug discovery purposes.
Jonathan Hall
Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
Eth Zurich
In 2012 JH served as Chairman of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (IPW).
Rob Howes
Director of Discovery Biology & Discovery Sciences
AstraZeneca
Rob has been at AstraZeneca since 2016 where he leads the Discovery Biology department part of the Innovative Medicines organisation.
Amaury Fernandez
Head of Compound Screening
SERVIER
Amaury E. Fernández-Montalván is the Head of Compound Screening at the SERVIER Research Institute since March 2018.
Matthias Frech
Director Molecular Interactions and Biophysics
Merck Serono
Dr. Matthias Frech is currently the Head of the Department for Molecular Interaction and Biophysics (MIB) at Merck.
Nikolaus Krall
Managing Director
Allcyte GmbH
Nikolaus Krall is a Vienna, Austria based biotech entrepreneur with a passion for translating cutting edge innovation from bench to bedside.
Jo Varshney
Founder & CEO
VeriSIM Life
Dr. Varshney’s research and development expertise are diverse, and encompasses physiology and medicine (DVM), computational biology and machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) (PhD).
Maria Waldhoer
Chief Scientific Officer
InterAx Biotech AG
Dr. Waldhoer has a 25+ year experience both in academia and industry in Europe and the US, working in early R&D project management and drug discovery.
Jonathan S Mason
Senior Research Fellow
Sosei Heptares
Dr Jonathan S Mason is a Senior Research Fellow at Sosei Heptares for GPCR structure-based drug design and a Scientific Advisor to several innovative biotech companies
Pilar Pizcueta
Director of Biology
Minoryx Therapeutics
Pilar holds a PhD in Pharmacy from the Universitat de Barcelona. Supported by a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship she worked at Harvard Medical School and later at Duke’s University, Durham (USA).
Kenneth Barr
Sr. Vice President – Discovery Services
Syngene
Kenneth holds a Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic/Organometallic Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has pursued his Postdoctoral study in Natural product synthesis
Vivek K Vishnudas
Sr Vice President
Berg LLC
As Senior Vice President, Drug Discovery and Platform Sciences, Vivek Vishnudas, oversees the development of experimental therapeutics from conception and drug discovery to first-in-human studies.
Sven Nahnsen
Director
Quantitative Biology Center - QBiC
High-throughput technologies generate an ever increasing amount of biological and medical data
Hubert Haag
Director BD&L Research Platforms
Sanofi
In the new Sanofi R&D organization, H. Haag is responsible for sourcing and external business within the Lead Generation department and is a member of its leadership team.
Oleg Fedorov
Group Head
University of Oxford
Open Chemical Tools for Discovery and Validation of novel Drug Targets.
Immanuel Lerner
CEO, co-founder
Pepticom
Scientist and Biotech entrepreneur with a proven track record in envisioning and establishing a successful AI/biotech startup.
Dora Barna
Application Scientist
ChemAxon
Dora Barna received her MSc degree in Chemistry in 2009, and PhD degree in Theoretical Chemistry in 2013 from the University of Szeged, Faculty of Science and Informatics, in Hungary.
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Jose Duca
Global Head of Computer-Aided Drug Discovery
Novartis
José is Global Head of Computer Aided Drug Discovery (CADD), part of
Global Discovery Chemistry at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical
Research (NIBR).
Alun McCarthy
VP Novel Target Biology and Genomics
C4X Discovery
Alun is currently VP Novel Target Biology and Genomics at C4X Discovery. He has over 35 years experience in pharmaceutical R&D, including drug discovery and genetics research.
Peter Hamley
Global Head, External Innovation, Drug Discovery Platforms
Sanofi
Experienced leader and manager in complex cross-functional R&D and BD organisations of top pharmacompanies
Hanneke Later-Nijland
Attorney At Law
Axon Lawyers
Hanneke is the only lawyer-pharmacist in the Netherlands. She specializes in EU and national (bio)pharma law.
Philip Tagari
VP of Research
AMGEN
Philip Tagari is currently Vice President of Research (Therapeutic Discovery) at Amgen Inc, the world’s largest independent biotechnology company.
Martin Akerman
CTO, Co-founder
Envisagenics
Dr. Martin Akerman is a data scientist trained in biology and computer science with a PhD from Technion (Israel) and a post doctorate from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).
Paul Beswick
Director of UK Chemistry and IP
Bicycle Therapeutics
Paul Beswick is a Medicinal Chemist with over 30 years experience both in industry and university drug discovery groups.
Markus Muellner
Chief Technology Officer
PhoreMost Ltd
Markus is a data scientist with a background functional genetic screening, engineering and bioinformatics and is leading the screening group and bioinformatics team at PhoreMost
Drug Discovery to Development Innovation Forum Past Speakers
Schrodinger
Schrödinger makes significant investments in R&D, which has led to breakthroughs in quantum chemistry, molecular modeling, force fields, molecular dynamics, protein structure determination, scoring, and virtual screening.
Berg LLC
Dr. Vishnudas manages the external R&D collaboration with industrial and academic partners and aims to scale up Berg’s R&D therapeutics portfolio. He is a co-inventor of the Interrogative Biology® technology and continues to spearhead development activities of “data-driven” technologies that enable drug discovery programs. His breadth of operations covers scientific leadership, strategic R&D initiatives, and commercial and intellectual property strategies.
H. Lundbeck A/S
Lars Arvastson is Senior Specialist in Data Science at H. Lundbeck A/S. He has long experience with mathematical modelling, statistics, machine learning and signal processing. Throughout the years he has been working in different parts of Lundbeck, including clinical pharmacology, biostatistics and bioinformatics; always with data and knowledge building from data in focus. He is also an external lecturer at the Danish Technical University where he is teaching courses in machine learning.
Ferring Pharmaceuticals
As Therapeutic Area Head Dr Marcel van Duin is from 2014 responsible for overseeing the global research activities covered by Ferring’s Reproductive Medicine & Women’s Health strategy. He received his PhD at the Department of Genetics and Cell Biology of the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He has almost 30 years of experience in the pharma industry with senior line management and therapeutic leadership positions in Organon, Schering Plough and Merck
Forte bio
Ilse Roodink obtained a PhD in Medical Sciences at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands in 2009 and continued her research as a postdoctoral researcher developing an in vitro platform to isolate single domain antibodies specifically recognizing tumor targets in its native conformation using phage display technology. In 2013, Ilse joined ModiQuest Research, an ImmunoPreciseAntibodies, Ltd. Company, as a scientist actively involved in phage display-based antibody discovery projects. She was promoted to General Scientific Project Manager in 2018, were she is responsible for contract research project execution and management within ModiQuest Research.
Dotmatics Inc
Rob Brown previously spent 10 years at Biovia where he was responsible for the product marketing teams for cheminformatics, and bioinformatics for the Life Sciences industries. Prior to its acquisition by Accelrys, Rob was the Director of Product Marketing for Pipeline Pilot at Scitegic. He also held positions at MSI and Abbott Laboratories. Rob received his PhD in Cheminformatics from the University of Sheffield, UK under the direction of Prof Peter Willett.
LEO Pharma
Thorsten has over 15 years of experience within biomedicine and drug research and he and his team has over the past years brought a number of molecules into clinical testing.
Prior to being Vice President of Research, Thorsten has over the years held leadership positions within LEO Pharma aiming to build translational drug discovery platforms in dermatology as well as refocusing the early formulation and CMC to build a platform for product improvements.
AbbVie
Aleksandra Baranczak works as a Senior Scientist at AbbVie where she leads the Chemical Biology group focusing on the mechanistic characterization of small molecules. She received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Vanderbilt University. Before joining AbbVie, she continued her education as a postdoctoral researcher in Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute.
Hubrecht Organoid Technology
Robert received his PhD in Biochemistry. He subsequently moved to Stanford University (USA) to do his Post Doc studying neural stem cells. Upon his return to the Netherlands he continued the study of stem cells in the group of Prof Hans Clevers at the Hubrecht Institute in The Netherlands.
In the group of Hans Clevers he was part of the team that developed the breakthrough technology that allowed the expansion of adult stem cells. The so called Organoid Technology became the basis of the non-profit company ‘Hubrecht Organoid Technology’ (HUB) of which he is currently the CEO.
LACDR, Leiden University
Laura H. Heitman, PhD. is a tenured associate professor of Receptor Pharmacology at the Division of Drug Discovery and Safety at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR, Leiden University), after being appointed as ‘tenure track’ assistant professor in January 2009. Her research interests are mainly focused on understanding and improving drug-receptor interactions, and more specifically, target binding kinetics and allosteric modulation of GPCRs. She has obtained several competitive research grants, all allowing her to study these novel, clinically relevant and highly translational concepts for drug action (e.g. IMI-K4DD and IMI-RESOLUTE, VENI and VIDI grants from Dutch Scientific Council for personal excellence). Her research activities have currently led to an authorship on over 80 papers in this field, including one in Science (2012) and one in Nature (2016). She is the recipient of the ‘2017 MedChemComm Emerging Investigator’-award, runner up for the ‘2018 EFMC Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia’-award and runner up for the ‘2018 Prix Galien Research’-award.
Beckman Coulter GmbH
Neil Kayal has a long standing interest in the cellular manufacturing process with the overarching intent of democratization in personalized medication. He trained in Bioengineering and functional medical resonance imaging at Temple University with a focus on spinal cord injury in pediatric population. His research was on non-invasively quantifying healthy neuronal tissues as a pre-op to assist neurosurgeries. He later started a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan, investigating the cognitive-affective, psychosocial, and biological processes associated with the etiology and treatment of pathological aggression in patients with Intermittent Explosive Disorder by designing fMRI and DTI protocols and SPM8 analysis of clinical data. At Beckman Coulter, Neil Kayal manages the global biopharma business commercializing the life sciences portfolio in the cell and gene therapy market.
Merus NV
Dr. Mark Throsby joined Merus in October 2008 with responsibility for coordinating preclinical research and external alliances. Prior to joining Merus, Dr. Throsby was 8 years at Crucell in various R&D capacities culminating in the role Director of Antibody R&D from 2006 to 2008. Before joining Crucell Dr. Throsby was an associate investigator with CNRS at Hôpital Necker in Paris for 4 years and prior to that held an MRC of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto. Dr. Throsby received his PhD from the Department of Medicine, Monash University, Australia.
UCB
Alastair has been closely involved with the discovery of UCB/Celltech’s therapeutic antibodies for thirty-five years, with Mylotarg®, Besponsa® and Cimzia® FDA-approved, and romosozumab, bimekizumab, dapirolizumab pegol and rozanoloxizumab in clinical trials. Alastair led the development of UCB’s proprietary antibody variable region discovery platform, and is now applying structure-based, rational design to antibody discovery. He pioneered UCB’s small molecule protein/protein interaction initiative, in which information derived from antibodies is applied to the discovery and design of new chemical entities. Current research interests include the use of function-modifying antibody fragments to define specific conformations of target proteins, linking X-ray crystallography, orthogonal biophysical techniques, molecular dynamics simulations and antibody technology to small molecule fragment screening.
Elasmogen Ltd
Marina is Principal Research Scientist at the next generation biologics company Elasmogen. She is a member of a team of scientists developing novel single chain domains (soloMERs) from initial lead isolation through to clinical candidate identification. Prior this Marina was a member of Shark IgNAR Development Team in Pfizer and Wyeth where she was working on development of platforms for the isolation of these binding domains and progressing pipeline candidates. Her first experience of developing shark domains was during her time with the antibody engineering spin-out company, Haptogen, which she joined in 2006. Marina has studied veterinary medicine and biotechnology in Moscow, Russia and obtained her PhD in immunology at the University of Kiel, Germany.
Eli Lilly and Co.
Dr Lewis Vidler completed a PhD in computational medicinal chemistry at the Institute of Cancer research in London, publishing a number of highly cited papers on bromodomains, and was given the Chairman’s award for best PhD student. Lewis then joined Lilly in 2013, initially as a contractor, but was made an FTE less than a year later. His interests span all aspects of drug discovery, especially medicinal chemistry and compound design. His role at Lilly is primarily computational project support, but is doing increasing amounts of work to automate various aspects of the drug discovery process.