Biography
Dr. Victor J. Hruby is a Regents Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arizona. He received his PhD at Cornell University in Theoretical Organic Chemistry and did a Postdoctoral studies with Nobel Laureate Vincent du Vigneaud. He has been a professor at University of Arizona since 1968 where he has joint appointments in the Neuroscience Program, Medical Pharmacology, and Bio5 among others. Dr. Hruby’s research interests are in the chemistry, biophysics, molecular pharmacology, molecular biology of peptide hormones and neurotransmitters and their receptors, transduction systems and in the design, synthesis and bio evaluation of novel ligands for the treatment of degenerative diseases.
Research Interest
Professor Hruby’s research has been primarily in the chemistry, conformation-biological activity relationships, molecular mechanisms of information transduction and of molecular diseases associated with peptide hormones and neurotransmitters and their receptors that modulate health, disease and human behavior. Specific methods and approaches used in this research include: de novo design of biologically active peptides and peptidomimetics; peptide and peptidomimetic synthesis; asymmetric synthesis; design and asymmetric synthesis of novel amino acids; computational chemistry; conformational analysis using NMR, X-ray crystallography and other biophysical tools; combinatorial chemistry; conformation-biological activity relationships; the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of peptide and peptide mimetic ligands that affect pain, addictions, feeding behaviors, pigmentation, sexual behavior and motivation, glucose homeostasis, cancer and other biological effects; peptide mimetic design; and the structure-function of G-protein coupled receptors. The Hruby group also is developing new synthetic methodologies for the assembly of multimeric ligands for the detection and treatment of pain, cancer and other diseases; a new approach to design of ligands for disease states involving the concept of overlapping pharmacophores to address several receptors simultaneously in a single molecular ligand. Professor Hruby has published over 1000 articles, reviews, chapters, commentaries and editorials and has over 25 patents and patent filings. Victor Hruby has received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984), the Alan E. Pierce Award (now the Merrifield Award) (1993), a Senior Humboldt Fellowship (1999-2000), the American Chemical Society Ralph F. Hirschmann Award (2002), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2009), the Murray Goodman Award (2011), the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame (2012) and the Meienhofer Award (2012).
Biography
Dr. Carsten Detering obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Freie Universitaet Berlin in Germany in 2001. He did his Post Doc at the University of Washington in Seattle where he worked on the application of docking software for nucleic acid drug targets and rational design of new inhibitors for a malaria project. In 2005 he came to BioSolveIT in Germany as an Application Scientist first, later filling the position of Senior Key Account Manager and Executive VP of Sales, North America, before moving back to Seattle as CEO of BioSolveIT Inc, the north American subsidiary of BioSolveIT.
Research Interest
He worked on the application of docking software for nucleic acid drug targets and rational design of new inhibitors for a malaria project.
Biography
Thorsten Nowak completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge (UK) in the areas of aldol methodology and natural product synthesis. In 1996 he joint AstraZeneca where he worked on all stages of drug discovery from target to candidate selection in medicinal chemistry as team leader and project manager. His keen interest in new technologies motivated a career move from big pharma to platform technology business in 2012 when he joint C4X Discovery. In his current role he is responsible for all internal drug discovery projects at C4X Discovery as well as continued development of the technology in the context of application to drug discovery.
Research Interest
The spotlight in drug discovery and design has been firmly centred on “quality†and “efficiency†in an endeavour to improve productivity and reduce high development attrition rates. In particular, much attention has been focused on measured and predicted drug property optimization because this is expected to significantly impact both the quality and the efficiency of drug design. With such a dominating focus, it is right to ask if other important aspects of drug design are being generally overlooked by the medicinal and computational chemistry community. This presentation aims to make a case for the increasingly clear importance (and therefore necessary adoption) of conformational design in harmony with property optimization. It is argued that the impact of creatively applied conformational design based on a validated experimental foundation will lead to a number of benefits and can be far reaching. For example, limiting shape diversity whilst gaining a deep understanding of shape giving structural features presents a complementary approach to property based design. It will lead to a tighter integration of the highly complementary medicinal and computational chemistry workflows. And importantly, it will provide undoubtedly a driver to re-invigorate the development and creative exploitation of experimental methods aimed at describing and predicting the conformational behaviour of small molecules in solution. Hence, conformational design based on experimental evidence offers new drivers for innovation in drug discovery.