About

Michelle Arkin, Ph.D., is Professor and Department Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco and an adjunct professor at the Buck Institute of Research on Aging. Her lab focuses on developing first-in-class compounds for novel targets in diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, with a particular interest in protein-protein interactions and protein-degradation networks. Michelle is a leader in academic drug discovery, with leadership roles at the UCSF Small Molecule Discovery Center, the international Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), the National Cancer Institute’s Chemical Biology Consortium and the Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM) consortium.

Alan Ashworth is President of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California, San Francisco and Senior Vice President for clinical services, UCSF Health. Ashworth was a key member of the team that discovered the BRCA2 gene in 1995, which is linked to an increased risk of breast, ovarian and other cancers. In 2005, his lab identified a way to exploit genetic weaknesses (using synthetic lethality) in cancer cells with mutated BRCA1 or 2 genes, leading to a new approach to cancer treatment, PARP inhibition. Four different PARP inhibitors have now been approved by the FDA for the treatment of ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancer based on this observation, which was named by Nature in the top 20 discoveries in cancer in the 21^st century. He continues to develop new treatments for cancer using genetic principles.

Ashworth has received a number of awards and prizes many of which recognize the innovative and translational nature of his work as well as its clinical impact. He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the American Association of Arts and Sciences, the American Association of Cancer Research and the Royal Society (equivalent to membership of the National Academy of Sciences). Prizes include the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Lifetime Achievement Award, the David T. Workman Memorial Award of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, the Meyenburg Foundation’s Cancer Research Award, the Genetics Society Medal, the Susan G Komen Brinker award and the inaugural Basser Global Prize.

Carolyn Bertozzi, Ph.D., is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Inventors. Carolyn is a world leader in the study of glycoscience as it relates to various diseases including cancer, inflammation and infectious disease. She shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing the concept of bioorthogonal chemistry, which has enabled new biological discoveries as well as novel therapeutic modalities.

Gideon Bollag, Ph.D. currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Opna Bio. Previously at Plexxikon, he served as Chief Scientific Officer and then Chief Executive Officer. Under his leadership, the team developed vemurafenib, the first FDA approved drug resulting from fragment-based discovery and subsequently also the FDA-approved drug pexidartinib. Dr. Bollag was also a member of the founding scientific team at Onyx Pharmaceuticals, where he led teams to the discovery of sorafenib, the first oral multikinase inhibitor targeting Raf, and to palbociclib, the first CDK4/6 inhibitor.

Luc Brunsveld, Ph.D., performed his Ph.D. research at TU/e and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) in the field of supramolecular chemistry, under supervision of Prof. E.W. (Bert) Meijer (2001, cum laude). He was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Herbert Waldmann at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology (Dortmund, Germany) working on protein semi-synthesis (2001-2002), followed by two years as a group leader in medicinal chemistry at Organon (Oss, the Netherlands, now Merck). In 2005, he started a research group at MPI in Dortmund working on supramolecular chemical biology, and subsequently also became group leader at the Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society, working on Nuclear Receptor protein interactions. In 2008, he moved to TU/e where he was appointed Full Professor of Chemical Biology in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Luc awards include the NVBMB Award of the Dutch Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2010, the Gold Medal of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society KNCV in 2013, and the NWO Vici grant (2015).

Steve Davidsen, Ph.D., is Vice President, Oncology Discovery in AbbVie’s R&D organization, where he is responsible for discovery and research efforts of AbbVie’s Oncology programs.  He has been a critical leader in building AbbVie’s Oncology pipeline, directing research teams and partnerships that have led to more than 300 current Oncology trials across a broad range of hematologic and solid tumor indications, and multiple FDA approvals.  He has more than 70 scientific publications across a diverse range of topics including metalloproteinase inhibitors, kinase inhibitors and the discovery of histone deacetylase inhibitors.  Steve is a member of AbbVie’s R&D Discovery Research Leadership Team and the Oncology Therapeutic Area Strategy Council. He earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Texas, Austin and held a post-doctoral position at the University of California, Berkeley before joining Abbott/AbbVie.

Geraldine Harriman, Ph.D., is Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at HotSpot Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing first-in-class allosteric therapies by applying HotSpot’s Smart Allostery platform. Prior to co-founding HotSpot, she served as Vice President at Nimbus Therapeutics, where she led the effort to discover Firsocostat, a leading drug for NASH. She also served as Vice President of Galenea, co-led the inflammation therapeutic area at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and was a founding member of the scientific team at LeukoSite. Geraldine received her Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Rhode Island and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Kansas.

Ali Tavassoli, Ph.D., is Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Southampton and Chief Scientific Officer of Curve Therapeutics. Ali’s research is focused on the development of high throughput screening platforms that enable the discovery of protein-protein interaction inhibitors, and the conversion of cyclic peptide hits into novel therapeutics.