Meet the MedChemCommEditorial Board

Plate1 Professor Greg Verdine – Co-Editor-in-Chief

Professor Greg Verdineis the Director of the Program in Cancer Chemical Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and is the Erving Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He holds academic appointments at Harvard in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (SCRB, primary), Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB, voting), and Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB, affiliate). His Dana-Farber research effort aims to discover entirely new molecular classes of drugs to tackle so-called “undruggable” targets, while his work in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences focuses on understanding fundamental aspects of DNA damage recognition and repair. Verdine is a Venture Partner at Third Rock Ventures and a Senior Advisor to the Texas Pacific Group, and has founded or co-founded a number of drug discovery companies including Gloucester Pharmaceuticals, Aileron Therapeutics, Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Ontorii Inc., Eleven Biotherapeutics, and Warp Drive Biosynthetics.

Plate2 Dr Tony Wood – Co-Editor-in-Chief

Dr Tony Woodwas appointed Head of Worldwide Medicinal Chemistry at Pfizer in October 2008. Prior to this he was Head of Chemistry and Exploratory Medicinal Sciences in Sandwich from February 2007 and Head of Chemistry from April 2004. He joined Pfizer as a Scientist in the Department of Discovery Chemistry at Sandwich in 1992. He played a leading role in the discovery of Maraviroc, a CCR5 antagonist for the treatment of HIV, for which he was awarded the RSC Malcolm Campbell Prize in 2005, and was a co-recipient of the ACS Heroes of Chemistry Prize, the Prix Galien USA and Scripps awards in 2008 and the PhRMA Discoverers Award in 2010. He also led the team that discovered Lersivirine, a new non-cross resistant non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor that is currently in Phase II. Tony received his BSc in 1987 and PhD in 1990 from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne working with Professor Richard Jackson on amino acid synthesis before completing post-doctoral studies with Professor Steven Ley at Imperial College in London. Tony has active interests in many areas of medicinal chemistry. He is currently a member of the EPSRC Council. He is an author or inventor on more than 50 scientific publications and patents and has given invited lectures at a number of International Conferences on Medicinal Chemistry. Tony is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Plate3 Dr Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova – Associate Editor

Dr Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikovawas born in Québec, Canada in 1973. She majored in chemistry at the Université Laval (BSc 1995, MSc 1997), where she worked with Profs. Robert Chênevert and Perséphone Canonne. She obtained her PhD in chemistry in 2003 at the University of Alberta where she studied new antimicrobial agents acting on bacterial cell walls in the laboratory of Prof. John C. Vederas. As a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Christopher T. Walsh’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School she studied halogenation and pyrrole formation during the biosynthesis of various natural products. In 2006, she joined the University of Michigan as the John G. Searle Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the College of Pharmacy and the Life Sciences Institute. Her research interests lie in the areas of mechanistic enzymology, in the development of new tools for combinatorial biosynthesis of novel nonribosomal peptides, and in the chemoenzymatic and synthetic formation of new aminoglycoside antibiotics. More information can be found at: http://www.lsi.umich.edu/facultyresearch/labs/garneau

Plate4 Professor Rob Leurs – Associate Editor

Professor Dr Rob Leursholds a chair in Medicinal Chemistry at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His research group participates in the Leiden/Amsterdam Center for Drug Research and focuses on the medicinal chemistry of G protein coupled receptors and their ligands (histamine and viral chemokine receptors) and Fragment-based Drug Discovery (GPCRs, kinases, PDEs, protein–protein interactions). In both research lines biological, chemical and computational approaches are combined in order to delineate molecular details of protein–ligand interactions. Leurs obtained his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at the VU with Prof. Henk Timmerman in 1992, and did a two year postdoc in Molecular Biology at INSERM, Paris, with Prof. Jean-Charles Schwartz. He returned to the Netherlands with a five year scholarship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences to establish a new research line at the VU University Amsterdam. In 2002 he was appointed full professor. Currently, he serves as vice-dean of the Faculty of Sciences, as director of the VU Drug Discovery Center and as director of Griffin Discoveries, a recently formed spin off around the work on G protein coupled receptors.

Plate5 Dr Ming-Qiang Zhang – Associate Editor

Dr Ming-Qiang Zhangis Chief Technology Officer and Vice-President for External Research at Roche R&D Centre (China). He also holds a professorship at HuaQiao University, China. He is one of the pioneers in applying novel molecular modalities such as supramolecular chemistry and synthetic biology to drug discovery, and has led the discovery of multiple candidate drugs progressed to approval or clinical development for treatment of CNS, cancer, inflammatory and infectious diseases. He is a co-recipient of the RSC Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize in Biological and Medicinal Chemistry (2007) and Nexxus Life Science Award for Innovation (2008) for the discovery of sugammadex (Bridion^®, Merck & Co), the first-in-class muscle relaxant reversing agent approved for clinical use. Dr Zhang received his PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of Antwerp in Belgium (1990) and did his post-doctoral research at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands (1991). After a further few academic years at the Leiden-Amsterdam Center for Drug Research (1991–1997), he joined Organon Laboratories where he was Section Head of Medicinal Chemistry before becoming Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Shire Pharmaceuticals (2002–2004). In 2004, he joined Biotica Technology initially as Vice-President of Research and then Senior Vice-President of Research & Development (2004–2009), where he played the key role in transforming the company to drug discovery and was instrumental in establishing the two significant R&D partnerships with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (now Pfizer) and GlaxoSmithKline, respectively. He also co-founded ViroChem Pharma Inc in 2004, which was acquired by Vertex in 2009.

Plate6 Professor Carlos Barbas III – Editorial Board member

Professor Carlos Barbas IIIreceived his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Texas A&M University in 1989 working with Chi-Huey Wong. Following postdoctoral studies at Pennsylvania State University and the Scripps Research Institute, he was appointed Assistant Professor in 1991 at the Scripps Research Institute where he is now the Janet and W. Keith Kellogg II endowed Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology. Professor Barbas has published approximately 300 scientific articles and is a named inventor on over 45 issued US patents. Dr Barbas has received honors including the Investigator Award from the Cancer Research Institute, The Scholar Award of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the American Chemical Society Cope Scholar Award, and the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award for Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry. He is the founder of the biotechnology companies Prolifaron (acquired by Alexion Pharmaceuticals in 2000), CovX (acquired by Pfizer in 2008), and Zyngenia Inc. and the inventor of their underlying core technologies. His inventions have facilitated the creation of a variety of novel drugs in a number of therapeutic areas.

Plate7 Dr Mark Bunnage – Editorial Board member

Dr Mark Bunnageread chemistry at the University of Durham and conducted his DPhil studies with Professor S. G. Davies at the University of Oxford. Mark then moved to The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California to work with Professor K. C. Nicolaou as a NATO postdoctoral fellow. Mark returned to the UK in 1996 to join Pfizer as a medicinal chemist. In 2002, he was appointed head of chemistry for Tissue Repair and later that year became head of chemistry for Allergy & Respiratory. In 2006, Mark became head of Lead Discovery, with responsibility for hit-to-lead chemistry, structural biology & chemical technology. During this period, Mark also helped establish the technology company Cyclofluidic. In November 2009, Mark moved to his current role as executive director, head of chemistry for Regenerative Medicine, Pfizer's New Opportunities Unit and Lead Discovery Technologies. Mark has an active interest in many areas of medicinal chemistry and is an author or inventor on over 50 scientific publications and patents. He is a member of the strategic advisory teams for the EPSRC physical sciences and healthcare programmes, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and serves on the Executive Committee of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry.

Plate8 Professor Gerhard Ecker – Editorial Board member

Professor Gerhard Eckeris Professor for Pharmacoinformatics and Head of the Pharmacoinformatics Research Group at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Vienna. He also coordinates the research focus “Computational Life Sciences” of the Faculty of Life Sciences. Gerhard studied pharmacy and received his doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Vienna. After performing his post-doctoral training at the group of J. Seydel in Borstel (Germany) he was appointed Associate Professor for Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Vienna (1998) and Full Professor for Pharmacoinformatics in 2009. He has published almost 100 articles related to SAR and QSAR studies on P-glycoprotein and his main scientific interests include pharmacoinformatic approaches to target drug efflux pumps, in silicohigh throughput screening methods for promiscuous targets and antitargets, and non-linear methods in drug design. He is currently President of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry and coordinator of the EUROPIN PhD Programme in Pharmacoinformatics.

Plate9 Dr Catherine Peishoff – Editorial Board member

Dr Catherine Peishoffis a Vice President within Research & Development at GlaxoSmithKline, Collegevillle, Pennsylvania. She leads Computational & Structural Chemistry, the global department within GSK responsible for the development and application of computational chemistry, protein crystallography, fragment-based medicinal chemistry, and bioanalytical sciences across GSK's therapeutic areas. Dr Peishoff received her PhD from Purdue University with Professor William Jorgensen and joined the computational chemistry group at Lederle Laboratories (now Pfizer) in 1985 before moving to SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (now GlaxoSmithKline) in 1987. Outside GSK, Dr Peishoff serves as an external advisor for the NIH Molecular Libraries Screening Initiative and for the Keystone Symposia.

Plate10 Dr David Rees – Editorial Board member

Dr David Reesjoined Astex in January 2003 and is Senior VP Medicinal Chemistry. Astex have pioneered fragment based drug discovery and have progressed several compounds from their internal research into clinical trials in cancer patients. Prior to Astex, he researched into drug discovery at Parke-Davis, Organon and AstraZeneca in Sweden where he was responsible for a Medicinal Chemistry Department with some 140 staff. David is a co-recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize 2007 for the discovery of the anaesthesia drug sugammadex (Bridion) which received regulatory approval in Europe in July 2008. He is a co-author of over 80 publications and patents and has served as an honorary Professor at Glasgow University and is currently President of the RSC Organic Division.

Plate11 Dr Motonari Uesugi – Editorial Board member

Dr Motonari Uesugireceived his BS and PhD degrees in chemistry and biochemistry from Kyoto University, Japan. Dr Uesugi then conducted his postdoctoral work at the Harvard University Chemistry Department. In 1998, Dr Uesugi started his independent career at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, where he has established an interdisciplinary laboratory in the area of chemical biology. He was tenured in Baylor in 2005, and moved to Kyoto University as a full professor in 2005. He is also a founding member of the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences, an international and interdisciplinary research institute that was established in Kyoto University in 2007. Dr Uesugi and his co-workers aim to gain a fundamental understanding of biological events through the study of small molecules. Dr Uesugi received a Tokyo Techno-forum 21 Gold Medal Award in 2006.

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