Gwenn Hansen
Gwenn is Vice President of Drug Discovery Technologies at Nurix Therapeutics, a company focused on discovering and developing next-generation therapies that target protein homeostasis through modulation of the ubiquitin proteasome system. Since joining Nurix in January of 2016, Gwenn has focused on establishing the company’s DNA encoded library technology platform for small molecule discovery, and now leads teams of scientists in both early discovery as well as medicinal chemistry. Prior to joining Nurix, Gwenn spent one year as an Associate Professor in the Center for Drug Discovery at Baylor College of Medicine and over 13 years in a variety of discovery-focused roles at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, both located in Houston, Texas. Gwenn received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1998 and completed postdoctoral training at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Kirti Sharma
Sara Buhrlage
Sara Buhrlage, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Dana-Farber’s Cancer Biology Department and Harvard Medical School’s Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Department. Her research group focuses on the development of first-in-class inhibitors and prototype drugs for deubiquitylating enzymes (DUBs) that can be utilized to pharmacologically validate members of the gene family as new targets for cancer treatment and other diseases. DUBs have garnered significant attention recently as potential therapeutic targets in the field of oncology due to their removal of degradative ubiquitin marks from cancer causing proteins.
Prior to joining as a faculty member in July 2015, Dr. Buhrlage was a professional track scientist at Dana-Farber in the medicinal chemistry core laboratory. In this role she collaborated with Institute researchers to pharmacologically validate novel targets of disease and study mechanisms of oncogenesis and drug resistance.
Dr. Buhrlage completed a Doctor of Philosophy in organic chemistry in 2008, under the direction of Professor Anna Mapp, PhD, from the University of Michigan, where she successfully designed, synthesized and characterized small molecules that bind the transcriptional co-activator CBP and upregulate transcription when tethered to DNA. Following completion of her Doctor of Philosophy, Dr. Buhrlage trained for two years in medicinal chemistry at the Broad Institute.
Nicolas Thomä
My laboratory has set out to combine structural biology, cell biology and complex biochemical in vitro reconstitutions to address the molecular workings of these chromatin-bound complex assemblies. Our focus is on machines that detect and repair mutations in the DNA, and those that make possible the accurate passage of epigenetic information to the daughter generation.
Yusuke Tominari
Yusuke Tominari is responsible for the overall success of a business entity or other organization and for making top-level managerial decisions as a CEO. He launched FIMECS with his colleagues in 2018 as a curve-out biotech from Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. He started his career of a medicinal chemist at Takeda in 2006 after getting a Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo in Japan. His expertise is medicinal chemistry in immunology, oncology and immuno-oncology areas, Natural product synthesis and Chemical biology (Bifunctional molecules, Photo-affinity labeling probes, Cleavable linkers and others). Through his thirteen years of the pharmaceutical experience, he has contributed 2 out-licensing and 1 IND filing as a leader of medicinal chemistry. He is currently having a big challenge, “Drugging Undruggable Targets” by the targeted protein degradation technology with a proprietary RaPPIDS platform.