Academic Drug Discovery Keynote Speakers

Michelle Arkin Director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center, University of California San Francisco Michelle Arkin is an Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Director of Biology at the Small Molecule Discovery Center at UCSF. The Small Molecule Discovery Center is a research ‘colaboratory’ that works with academic and biotech investigators to develop small-molecule probes and drug leads. Michelle’s research is focused on structure/function and chemical biology of allosterically regulated enzymes and protein-protein interactions (PPI). Her lab also has a strong interest in developing probes and drug leads to address mechanisms of neurodegeneration, cancer, and parasitic disease. Michelle is involved in academic drug discovery as an investigator in the NCI’s Chemical Biology Consortium and the Tau Consortium, an editor of the NIH’s Assay Guidance Manual, and a board member of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium.
Sir Alan Fersht Professor, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Sir Alan Fersht, FRS, is a pioneer in the field of protein engineering since late 1970s. He is Herchel Smith Professor of Organic Chemistry and Master and Life Fellow of Gonveille and Caius College in University of Cambridge. His lab uses an amalgam of protein engineering, structural biology, biophysics and chemistry to study the structure, activity, stability and folding of proteins, and the role of protein misfolding and instability in cancer and disease. We focus on how mutation affects proteins in the cell cycle, particularly the tumor suppressor p53, in order to design novel anti-cancer drugs that function by restoring the activity of mutated proteins. He published many papers and books with over 65,000 citations and h-index 135. He has been recognized by many awards including Gabor Medal, Davy Medal, and Royal Medal of the British Royal Society; Wilhelm Exner Medal Austria; G. N. Lewis Medal, Bijvoet Medal, Linderstrøm-Lang Medal, Anfinsen and Stein and Moore Awards. He is also Foreign Member of National Academy of Science USA, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Philosophical Society and Member of EMBO and Academia Europaea.
Paul Workman Chief Executive and President, Institute of Cancer Research, London Professor Paul Workman is Chief Executive and President of The Institute of Cancer Research and Harrap Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Until January 2016 he was also Director of the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit at the ICR – the world’s largest non-profit cancer drug discovery group. Workman has been responsible for more than 20 molecularly targeted cancer drugs entering clinical trial. He is especially renowned for his innovative personal research in the discovery, chemical biology and molecular pharmacology of leading drugs acting on the molecular chaperone HSP90 (eg AUY922 licensed to Novartis) and PI3 kinase (eg pictilisib, GDC-0941; licensed to Genentech) and as the originator of the widely used Pharmacologic Audit Trail for biomarker-led drug development. Workman has won numerous rewards and fellowships including election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016.