Rajesh Chopra

Professor Rajesh Chopra is Director of the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit and Head of the Division of Cancer Therapeutics at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. He has had experience of working both in academia and industry having been Director of Hematological Oncology, Christie Hospital in Manchester and subsequently in the Oncology Therapeutic area at AstraZeneca.
From 2009-2016, he was leader of the Executive R&D Team and Corporate Vice President of Translational and Early Drug Development at Celgene Corporation, Summit, NJ, where he led a team of over 100 scientists in San Diego, San Francisco and Seville. There he was involved in a large number of drug discovery and development projects and part of a team that helped to define the mechanism of action of Thalidomide and its analogues. In addition, Raj was also involved in the New Drug Applications for pomalidomide (a second generation IMiD agent) and apremilast (a PDE4 inhibitor). Both drugs were approved in 2013 and 2014 respectively.

Pearlie Epling-Burnette

I am a Senior Member and Professor at the Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL.  As a member of the Immunology Program, I have made several leading observations on immune deregulations in the setting of bone marrow failure, hematological malignancies, and solid tumors. In addition to collaborations with physician scientist to assist with investigator-initiated clinical trials, I have conducted research studies with collaborators focused on Cancer Prevention and Control to uncover the epidemiology of cancer.  My research focuses on drug discovery for the design of new therapeutics, and pathology to improve diagnostic testing for personalized treatment matching.  My laboratory research efforts are focused on understanding how to potentiate anti-tumor cytotoxic T cells that have the potential to eliminate tumors. Specifically, I have been evaluating the ability of a class of immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) to activate anti-tumor cytotoxic T cells in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes and other cancers.  This research as led to the discovery that cereblon (an E3-ubiquitin ligase substrate receptor) is involved in blocking anti-tumor T cell activation. The ultimate goal is to realize the potential of immunotherapy for patients with hematologic malignancies and other forms of cancer.

Success in the lab builds excitement, but always leads to more questions. I feel that research it is a never-ending quest for truth.  I first received my Doctorate in Pharmacy before obtaining a PhD.  I think this stimulated my interest in drug discovery research.  After 25 tireless years of research in the field of immunology, I think we are finally hitting our stride.

Phil Chamberlain

Nan Ji

Nan Ji, Ph.D., is Executive Director and Head of Chemistry at Kymera Therapeutics. Nan has more than 10 years of drug discovery experience. Before Kymera, he spent 2 years at Mitobridge (now part of Astellas), where he was responsible for its NAD+-boosting portfolio with multiple approaches to modulate mitochondrial functions. Prior to that, Nan spent 7+ years at Novartis, where he contributed to and delivered multiple clinical and preclinical development candidates. Nan obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Prof. Andy Myers and conducted his postdoc with Prof. Eric Jacobsen at Harvard University.

Seth Margolis

Dr. Margolis received his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry at the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY).  In 1999, he joined graduate school at Duke University Medical Center (Durham, North Carolina) in the department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology.  There, Dr. Margolis completed a doctoral thesis with Dr. Sally Kornbluth focusing on molecular mechanisms of DNA-responsive cell cycle checkpoints using the frog Xenopus egg extract system.  Following completion of a Ph.D., in 2006 Dr. Margolis joined the laboratory of Dr. Michael Greenberg in the department of Neurobiology at Harvard University (Boston, Massachusetts).  During a postdoctoral tenure with the guidance and support of Dr. Greenberg, Dr. Margolis focused his efforts on the molecular pathways that regulate excitatory synapse formation and investigating their relevance to the pathophysiology of the cognitive disorder Angelman Syndrome.  In September 2011, Dr. Margolis joined the Department of Biological Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor. The vast majority of Dr. Margolis work is centered on understanding how molecular mechanisms that restrict synapses during development are reactivated in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease. To this end, Dr. Margolis and his group use genetically engineered mouse models of disease and a multidisciplinary approach that combines aspect of molecular biology, biochemistry and in vivo synapse imaging in order to develop hypothesis about the underlying cause of synapse degeneration and cognitive decline.  They then use genetic rescue or stereotactic approaches to target distinct pathways followed by a wide range of behavioral tasks to assay cognitive function and tests their hypotheses.  More recently, Dr. Margolis has developed a new direction focused on cellular protein homeostasis mechanisms related to protein degradation and their impact on changes in the function and physiology of the nervous system. Using a wide range of classic biochemical purification approaches, Dr. Margolis and his team have identified novel proteasome mediated pathways in the nervous system and are just beginning to understand their relevance to health and disease.

Manfred Koegl

Manfred Koegl is a director in Oncology Research in Vienna, working on the discovery and implementation of new therapeutic concepts in cancer. Presently, his team focuses on targeted protein degradation in cancer cell signaling.

Before 2010, he worked at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. He has worked at several small biotech companies in Heidelberg, including Phenex Pharmaceuticals. Manfred Koegl studied biology in Vienna and received his PhD in cell biology in 1994 at the EMBL, Heidelberg.

James Hunt

James Hunt is an Associate Director in the Discovery Biology department of Discovery Sciences, which is part of the AstraZeneca IMED Biotech Unit.  James leads the Affinity Reagents team, who have global responsibility for delivering antibodies and other affinity reagents for use as research tools to AstraZeneca’s Innovative Medicines and Early Development drug discovery programmes.

Adam Gilbert

Adam joined Pfizer in February 2010 as an Associate Research Fellow and a lab head in charge of the Experimental Design Chemistry (EDC) – a group that focused on key portfolio projects with challenging medicinal chemistry design issues including covalent inhibitors, allosteric GPCR modulators, and chemoproteomics. EDC helped drive candidate molecule discovery for Rare Diseases, Neuroscience, and Immunology programs highlighted by PF-06651600 (ritlecitinib), a covalent JAK3/Tec inhibitor, that has recently been submitted as an NDA for Alopecia areata.  Adam is currently an Executive Director in charge of Pfizer’s Design and Synthesis Sciences (DSS) Group.  DSS is a platform medchem group located in Pfizer’s Discovery Sciences Department in Groton, CT which helps drive key Pfizer initiatives such as protein degradation, DNA-encoded library chemistry, and selection analysis, covalent inhibitor design, vaccine protein design, small molecule purification, and small molecule NMR.

Eric Fischer

Daniel Nomura

Dan Nomura is a professor in the Departments of Chemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology, and Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF. He is also the director of the Novartis-Berkeley Center for Proteomics and Chemistry Technologies. Dr. Nomura is also an editor for Cell Chemical Biology and Current Protocols in Chemical Biology. He earned his B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology and Ph.D. in Molecular Toxicology with Professor John Casida at UC Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute in chemical physiology with Professor Ben Cravatt before returning to UC Berkeley as a faculty member in 2011. Among his honors are selection as a Searle Scholar, American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, the Department of Defense Breakthroughs Award, and the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research INSPIRE award. Research in the Nomura Research Group is focused on reimagining druggability using chemoproteomic platforms to discover new disease therapies.