Confirmed Speakers

Frédéric Berst is a Director and team leader at Novartis Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland. His team is responsible for the deployment of parallel chemistry approaches to the identification and optimization of chemical matter against targets of therapeutic interest. Prior to joining Novartis in 2003, he did his PhD in the group of Pr. Andrew Holmes at the University of Cambridge, UK, and conducted post-doctoral studies under the supervision of Pr. Jonathan Ellman at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Christoph E. Dumelin is an Asscociate Director and group leader at the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland. His team is developing encoded library technologies and applying them to drug discovery research with a special emphasis on novel drug modalities including radio ligand therapeutics. Before working at Novartis, he worked on DNA-encoded libraries at X-Chem Pharmaceuticals, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, and on whole-blood pool contrast agents at Philochem, Zurich, Switzerland. He obtained his M.Sc. in biochemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland, and his Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences at the ETH Zurich with Dario Neri. He completed his postdoctoral training in chemical biology with David Liu at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA.

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Currently I am an Associate Director Medicinal Chemistry at Acerta Pharma/Astrazeneca located in Oss. I am leading several small molecule drug discovery projects focusing on finding treatments for heme malignancies (myeloma, lymphoma, leukemia). I also have line management responsibilities for 10 (senior) scientists. I joined Acerta Pharma about 8 years ago, initially working mainly on covalent inhibitor programs. Over the years, the rapidly growing drug discovery organization at Acerta has been fully integrated into Astrazeneca Oncology Discovery. My background is in organic chemistry and chemical biology. I obtained my PhD from Leiden University in 2016 (Leiden Institute for Chemistry, promotor: Prof. dr. Overkleeft). During my PhD I developed proteasome subunit selective covalent inhibitors, activity based probes and assays. This provided me with a perfect skill set to continue working in pharmaceutical industry, where I like to work at the interface of organic/medicinal chemistry, biochemistry and biology, with the ultimate aim to improve patient lives by finding better cancer treatments.

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Dr. Maria DUCA is a CNRS Research Director and the head of Targeting of Nucleic Acids team at the Institute of Chemistry of Nice (Université Côte d’Azur - CNRS). After undergraduate studies in Pharmacy and Medicinal Chemistry (Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Bologna, Italy), she obtained her PhD in Molecular Biochemistry under the supervision of Dr. Paola B. Arimondo (National Natural History Museum, Paris, France) working on topoisomerase II inhibitors. A 2-year post-doctoral training in Sydney Hecht’s lab (Department of Chemistry, University of Virginia, USA) allowed her to pursue the study of nucleic acids working on targeted protein mutagenesis. After CNRS recruitment as a Research Scientist in 2008 and promotion to Director of Research in 2022, her research activities focus on the targeting of non-coding RNAs using synthetic small molecules toward innovative therapeutic approaches for anticancer, antiviral and antimicrobial applications. She has been awarded the Michel Delalande award from the Académie de Pharmacie as well as national and international grants including H2020 grants. She is Associate Editor for RSC Medicinal Chemistry journal, chair of the Chemical Biology Initiative of EFMC as well as vice-president of the French medicinal chemistry society (Société de Chimie Thérapeutique).

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Chris obtained an M.A. degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Bristol, UK. Following more than twenty years as a medicinal chemist at GSK and legacy companies, he moved to Astex in 2008, where he has worked on fragment- and structure-based approaches applied to multiple target classes including PPI antagonists, with particular focus on the oncology and neurodegeneration disease areas. He is a co-inventor or co-author on over 100 patents and scientific publications.

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Hannah Stewart is a Senior Research Associate in medicinal chemistry at the CRUK Drug Discovery Unit, Newcastle University Centre for Cancer. Her work focusses on the development of novel approaches to high value cancer targets in particular via irreversible inhibition. She has a degree and PhD from Cambridge University where she worked with Prof. David Spring on diversity oriented approaches to medicinally relevant scaffolds. She has published 8 papers, 1 book chapter and filed 2 patent applications.

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Mike Waring is Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Newcastle University, Head of Chemistry for the CRUK Drug Discovery Unit, Newcastle University Centre for Cancer and Director of Academic Medicinal Chemistry for Cancer Research Horizons. His research interests lie in drug discovery, with a focus on cancer, and new methods for medicinal chemistry optimisation using covalent inhibitors, DNA-encoded methods and fragment-based approaches. Prior to joining Newcastle University, he was Principal Scientist at AstraZeneca. He has published over 70 papers and over 20 patents.

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