Contributors to ‘New Talent: Europe’
This Profile article offers a brief insight into the researchers who have contributed to this themed issue on the new talent emerging from Europe and the great work that is being done by them. We would like to congratulate them and their teams on their achievements to date and hope they have continued success in the future as they continue their careers within the medicinal chemistry field.
Anders Bach was born in Denmark, in 1979. He received his PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009. He continued as a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen, until he later in 2012 joined the Italian Institute of Technology, Department of Drug Discovery and Development (Genoa, Italy) also as a postdoc. He now works as assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen where he recently started up his own research group, ‘Bach Group’, focusing on fragment-based drug discovery and protein–protein interactions involved in CNS diseases.
Steven Ballet was born in Belgium, in 1979. He received his PhD in Chemistry from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium in 2007, after which he performed a postdoctoral stay at the University of Adelaide (Australia) and the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal (Canada). In 2010 he returned to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel as an associate professor in Bioorganic Chemistry. His current research interests are medicinal, peptide and peptidomimetic chemistry.
Frank M. Boeckler was born in Germany in 1976. He received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the lab of Peter Gmeiner at the FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg in 2004. For short term research projects, he worked at the ETH in Zurich and at the Philipps University in Marburg. He specialized in computational chemistry and drug design, ranging from QM methods to in silico screening. In 2006, he joined Prof. Sir Alan R. Fersht at the MRC Center for Protein Engineering in Cambridge/UK as Marie Curie fellow and while there discovered p53 mutant stabilizers as potential new cancer therapeutics focusing on molecular biology and biophysics. In 2008, he was appointed as Professor (W2tt) for Bioanalytics at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) Munich. In 2010, he moved to Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen as Professor for Medicinal Chemistry/Drug Design, where he currently heads the Laboratory for Molecular Design & Pharmaceutical Biophysics. He received several awards including the Klaus-Grohe-Preis in Medicinal Chemistry (GDCh) and the PHOENIX-Pharmazie Wissenschaftspreis. His current research is dedicated to improving the applicability of sigma hole/halogen bonds in chemical biology and drug discovery.
Giovanni Bottegoni was born in Italy, in 1976. He received his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Bologna, Italy in 2006 and a master in international healthcare management, economics and policy (MIHMEP) from SDA Bocconi, Italy in 2015. In 2008, he joined the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia first as a post-doc and later as a team leader. Currently he is CEO at BiKi Technologies, an innovative startup company that develops software solutions for drug discovery. In 2015, he was awarded by the medicinal chemistry division of the Italian chemical society the DCF prize for medicinal chemistry. His research interests are: computer-assisted drug design, in silico polypharmacology, and, more recently, big data driven drug discovery.
Olivier Defert is co-founder of Amakem and manages R&D and preclinical development since 2010. Olivier led the preclinical development of AMA0076, a ROCK inhibitor in phase 2 for the treatment of glaucoma and ocular hypertension. Prior to Amakem, Olivier was section leader in Medicinal Chemistry at Devgen NV in Belgium for 8 years, with responsibilities in combinatorial chemistry, medicinal chemistry and preclinical development of the Devgen's leads ROCK inhibitor for the treatment of Crohn's disease and PKC inhibitor for the local treatment of psoriasis. He received his PhD in medicinal chemistry from the faculty of Pharmacy of Lille (France) in 2005. He is co-inventor of more than 20 patents and co-author of 8 peer reviewed publications.
Frank J. Dekker was born in The Netherlands, in 1977. He received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Utrecht University, the Netherlands in 2004. Subsequently, he did postdoctoral research at the Max-Planck Institute for molecular physiology in Dortmund, Germany until 2007. Next, he moved to the University of Groningen, The Netherlands as assistant professor. Since 2012 he has been promoted to associate professor at the same university and is now part of the group Chemical and Pharmaceutical Biology. His current research interests are: Medicinal Chemistry, Enzyme inhibition, Epigenetics, Lipid signaling and Inflammation.
Laurence Deyon-Jung was born in France, in 1976. A graduate of the Engineer National School of Chemistry (ENSCM, Montpellier), she joined Prestwick Chemical, a medicinal chemistry company created by Professor Wermuth in 1999 in Illkirch, France. In 2010, in parallel to her position of project leader, she received her PhD in organic chemistry from the Université Louis Pasteur, France. Since 2013, she has been promoted team leader at Prestwick Chemical and in 2014, she was voted first runner-up of the EFMC prize for a young medicinal chemist in industry. Her current research interests include the identification of new hits using virtual screening, structure-based drug design as well as scaffold hopping.
Antimo Gioiello was born in Italy, in 1976. He received his PhD in Chemistry and Technology of Drugs from the University of Perugia (Italy) in 2005. After post-doctoral experiences, in 2007 he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Technology of Drugs of the University of Perugia. Currently, he is Associate Professor of Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (University of Perugia). His research work has spanned various stages from early discovery to clinical candidates in the area of liver and metabolic diseases. His main research interests include the development of chemical probes and bioactive compounds for steroid-responsive receptors, natural and steroidal products, enabling chemical technologies as flow chemistry, design and optimization of new processing methods for compound library and large-scale preparation.
Vânia M. Moreira was born in Portugal, in 1979. She holds a doctoral degree (2008) in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, which she finished with the highest-scoring grade “passed with Distinction and honors”. In addition to Portugal, she has carried out her research at the University of Maryland, USA (2006–2007), University of Ferrara, Italy (2011) and since 2012, at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, Finland, where she is currently an Adjunct Professor and Principal Investigator. Her research interests are organic and medicinal chemistry of natural products, including the design and synthesis of compounds that are used to probe the molecular mechanisms that underlie human diseases or as leads to develop new drugs for their treatment, as well as the development of new synthetic organic chemistry methods in the field of natural products.
Christian A. Olsen was born in Denmark, in 1974. He received his PhD in medicinal chemistry from The Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Copenhagen, Denmark in 2004. He spent two years as non-tenured assistant professor at this institution before he joined Prof. Ghadiri at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA as a postdoc. In 2010 he returned to Denmark as Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark. Since 2014 he has been Professor at Center for Biopharmaceuticals, University of Copenhagen. His current research interests include: foldamers, quorum sensing modulators, as well as discovery of inhibitors and specific substrates of histone deacetylase enzymes.
Dmitry I. Osolodkin was born in Russia, in 1985. He joined the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry, headed by Dr. Vladimir A. Palyulin, at the Department of Chemistry of Lomonosov Moscow State University, in 2003, where he started to learn medicinal chemistry and molecular modelling. From 2005 to 2015 he worked at the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry as research associate. He received his PhD in Organic & Medicinal Chemistry from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, in 2011. Since April 2015 he has been the head of Laboratory of Structural Virology at Chumakov Institute of Poliomyelitis and Viral Encephalitides. His current research interests are: design of antiviral compounds, chemical virology, computational studies of viral entry. (Photo by Nadezhda Solovyeva)
Tracey Pirali was born in Italy, in 1978. She received her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the Università del Piemonte Orientale (Novara, Italy) in 2007. After a stay at the CNRS in Gif-sur-Yvette (Paris) under the guidance of Professor Jieping Zhu, in 2008 she was appointed Assistant Professor at the Università del Piemonte Orientale. In 2011 she spent her sabbatical as a Visiting Professor at the School of Chemistry in Edinburgh with Prof. Michael Greaney. Currently, she is Associate Professor of medicinal chemistry at the Università del Piemonte Orientale, where her main research interest is the design and synthesis of bioactive compounds via multicomponent reactions and click chemistry, with a focus on indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase, TRP channels and store operated calcium entry.
Marco Radi received his PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of Siena (Italy) in 2004. He did postdoctoral studies at the University of Georgia (USA) with Prof. C. K. Chu (2005–2006) and at the University of Siena with Prof. M. Botta (2006–2011). In 2011 he joined the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Parma as Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014. He has made significant breakthroughs in the development of new methods for the synthesis of biologically active chemical probes in the area of anticancer and antiviral drug discovery. His current research emphasizes the integration of combinatorial chemistry and computational techniques to develop novel drug candidates for neglected diseases.
Maria M. M. Santos was born in Portugal, in 1976. She received her PhD in Organic Synthesis from New University of Lisbon (Portugal) in 2004. She spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher at University of Barcelona (Spain). In 2006 she joined the University of Lisbon, where she became a Science 2007 researcher in 2008. Currently, she is a FCT Investigator at the school of Pharmacy (University of Lisbon). Her current research interests include the synthesis of novel chemically diverse small molecules that modulate enzymes and proteins identified as key therapeutic targets in apoptosis. Maria recently received the Portuguese Award for Best Young Organic Chemist 2015 from the Organic Chemistry Division of the Portuguese Chemical Society (SPQ) and is currently part of the direction of the medicinal chemistry division of SPQ.
Anna Stary-Weinzinger received her doctoral degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Vienna, Austria in October 2007. In 2008 she joined the Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry, in Goettingen, Germany, as postdoc. In 2009 she returned to Vienna, where she habilitated in Pharmacoinformatics in 2015. In 2012 she was awarded the Gertrud Pleskot Award. Currently she holds a tenure track position at the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her current research interests include structure and dynamics of voltage and ligand gated ion channels, molecular mechanisms of ion channel disease and modulation of ion channels by small molecules.
Alexander Titz was born in Germany, in 1977. He received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Basel (Switzerland) in 2008, after a Diplom-Ingenieur in chemistry from the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2004. In 2008 he joined the department of microbiology and immunology at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) as a Roche Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow and in 2010 established his independent research group at the University of Konstanz (Germany). Since 2013, he has been a Helmholtz Young Investigator group leader at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), Germany and the German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF). His current research interests are chemical glycobiology and medicinal chemistry of carbohydrates and natural products in infection. Alexander was awarded the Klaus-Grohe-Prize for Medicinal Chemistry of the German Chemical Society in 2010.
Gemma Triola was born in 1976 in Girona (Spain). She gained her Ph.D. from the University of Barcelona in 2004 under the supervision of Prof. G. Fabriàs and Prof. A. Llebaria. She then moved to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund and joined the group of Prof. H. Waldmann first as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a group leader. Dr. G. Triola returned to Spain in 2012 and was hired on a permanent position at the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC, Spanish Research Council (CSIC)). Her current research interests are to investigate the functioning of bioactive molecules as a possible foundation for drug development, the establishment of methods for protein modification, the characterization of lipid-protein interactions and the development of chemical tools for the study of autophagy.
Asier Unciti-Broceta was born in Spain, in 1976. He received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the Universidad de Granada (Spain) in 2004. After postdoctoral work in the fields of Cell Delivery and Chemical Biology at the School of Chemistry of the University of Edinburgh (UK), he joined the Edinburgh Cancer Research UK Centre in 2010 to create the first chemistry lab of the Institute. Currently, he is a Reader in Medicinal Chemistry and heads the Innovative Therapeutics Lab. His group explores novel chemical strategies to improve the efficacy and safety of cancer treatments, including the development of highly-selective inhibitors of kinases involved in cancer and bioorthogonal prodrug strategies aimed at improving the clinical use of well-established chemotherapeutics.
Pieter Van der Veken received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Antwerp (UA, Belgium) in 2004. He first pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands) with Prof. Rob Liskamp and Prof. A. Heck. He then returned to UA as a fellow of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research, guided by Prof. K. Augustyns and Prof. A. Haemers. In 2010 he was appointed Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at UA. His current research interests include protease inhibitors, drug discovery for infectious diseases, and imaging and proteomics probes for various target classes. He also has several ongoing projects dealing with methodology development to facilitate the practice of drug discovery.
Petrine Wellendorph was born in Denmark, in 1975. She received her PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from the Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Copenhagen, Denmark in 2006. In 2009–2010 she was guest researcher at the University of Sydney, Australia. Since 2010 she has been Associate Professor and established her research group at the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen. In 2013 Dr. Wellendorph was awarded a Lundbeck Foundation Fellowship. Petrine Wellendorph is a member of the Young Academy of Sciences at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (http://www.youngacademy.dk). Her current research interests are: Pharmacological characterization of GABA and GHB receptors and transporters in the central nervous system using methods such as cell-based assays, electrophysiological and neurobiological methods.
Dr Grigoris Zoidis was born in Kavala, Greece. He studied Pharmacy (2000) and received his M.Phil. (2002) and Ph.D. (2006) in medicinal chemistry from the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Athens. He continued for one and a half years post-doctoral research in the University of Bari with Professor Angelo Carotti and in 2010 he joined the team of Professor Skaltsounis for another two years working on natural product synthesis. He has received many awards and fellowships, among them the Young Investigator award, from the Association of Greek Chemists and was the Greek representative at the 4th EuCheMS Young Investigator Workshop. Since 2012, he has been pursuing his independent career as a Lecturer and from 2014 as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Athens. His current interests include medicinal and organic chemistry, specifically, design and synthesis of compounds with antiviral, trypanocidal, anticancer and CNS activity.
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