Advances in Drug Discovery & Development 2024

Adityo started Verseon to change the way the world finds new medicines. He enjoys building fundamental science-based solutions to major business problems that impact society. Adityo has led the development of Verseon’s drug discovery platform, novel drug pipeline, and overall business strategy. Previously, he was the CEO of Pulsent Corporation and is the primary inventor of technology at the heart of all video streaming today. With a track record of delivering industry firsts, Adityo is an inventor on 40 patent families. He received his BS in physics and mathematics from Caltech.

Dr. Raviv Pryluk is co-founder and CEO of PhaseV, a pioneer in causal machine learning (ML) for clinical trial analysis and optimization. Prior to his tenure at PhaseV, Dr. Pryluk held integral roles in operations and data analytics at Immunai, a biotechnology company specializing in the mapping and reprogramming of immunology. Before that Dr. Pryluk was a technological leader in the advanced technological defense industry for over a decade. He holds a BSc and MSc in aerospace, aeronautical, and astronautical engineering from Technion (Cum Laude) and a Ph.D. in neurobiology and neurosciences from the Weizmann Institute of Science (Summa cum laude).

Aurita Menezes, PhD is a Sr. market Development manager within the Marketing team at Lonza. In her role she is responsible for identifying products and product improvements that will serve the biologics and preclinical markets. Her portfolio focuses on hematopoietic immune and stem cells. She works closely with the Lonza R&D team to drive innovation with new primary cell products and assays. Aurita received her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from University of Mississippi where she researched the major histocompatibility complex of Ictalurus punctatus. Previous to her role at Lonza she was a Sr. product manager at Integrated DNA technologies leading the development of qPCR gene expression and genotyping products.

Franziska Hausig-Punke, PhD, has a scientific background in molecular nutrition research and completed her doctorate on the biological characterisation of drug delivery systems for gene therapeutics. Franziska has been contributing her expertise to Analytik Jena since 2022 and has been working as an Industry Manager for the pharmaceutical industry since this year.

As both a journalist and analyst, Mike has been writing, analyzing and commenting on the life sciences industry for more than 35 years. His actionable insights and analysis support pharma, biotech, healthcare and medtech stakeholders gain a deeper understanding of market news and trends. Mike has held editorial and content leadership roles at various publications and organizations across the industry.

Hong I. Wan, Ph.D. is president, chief executive officer and co-founder of Tallac Therapeutics. Dr. Wan is a life science leader with over 20 years of drug development experience and expertise in biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Most recently she served as the chief scientific officer and a member of the founding management of ALX Oncology. Dr. Wan held various leadership positions at Pfizer and Wyeth Research, where she was responsible for the early development and translational medicine strategy and execution across various therapeutic areas. Dr. Wan started her career at Renovis where she led discovery programs in neuroinflammation. Dr. Wan received her Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from University of California, Berkeley and A.B. degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard University.

Kevin McCann focuses on high-throughput LC/MS solutions at Agilent Technologies in product marketing for RapidFire and StreamSelect. He has also worked as an application scientist, developing and supporting a variety of LC/MS applications.

Matthew Arnold is an analyst and content strategist at Clarivate, where he mines his colleagues’ expertise for thought leadership and tells the story of how Clarivate helps life science companies deliver medical innovations to patients. He has had a window onto the global pharma, biotech and medtech industries for 25 years, first as a reporter and now as a content marketer.

Dr. Jamie Spangler is The Brody Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Spangler earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and went on to earn a PhD in Biological Engineering at MIT. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine, Dr. Spangler launched her independent research group at Johns Hopkins University in 2017, jointly between the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. Her lab, located in the Translational Tissue Engineering Center at the School of Medicine, applies structural and mechanistic insights to re-engineer existing proteins and design new proteins that therapeutically modulate the immune response. In particular, her group is interested in engineering immune molecules such as cytokines, growth factors, and antibodies for targeted treatment of diseases such as cancer and autoimmune disorders.

Jon is an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University. He received his PhD in antimicrobial chemical biology in 2016 from McMaster. From 2017–2021 he was a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Upon completing his postdoc, Jon established his laboratory back at McMaster in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, in the summer of 2021. The Stokes lab leverages a mindful balance of experimental and computational approaches to discover and design antibacterial molecules with structural and functional novelty. One of our primary interests, quite broadly, is in the development and application of leading-edge artificial intelligence algorithms to predict and design new molecules with potent antibacterial activity and high translational potential.

Romina Durigon, Ph.D. recently joined Sphere Fluidics as Senior Field Application Scientist. She has worked as a scientist for more than 15 years, investigating the role of metabolism in diseases and during development. After earning her MSc in Physiology and Pathology from The University of Trieste (Italy), she obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from The University of Manchester (UK), in which she focused on cytosolic redox balance for mitochondrial biogenesis. She went to the National Institute of Medical Research, now part of the Francis Crick Institute in London, to complete a postdoctoral fellowship investigating the role of mitochondrial dysfunction and cellular metabolism in rare diseases. She discovered a ketone bodies-based treatment for the rare Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome and published her results in many peer-reviewed journals. Fascinated by the role of mitochondria in ageing, she continued to investigate the mitochondrial function in epigenetic aging.

Passionate about leveraging technology to amplify the impact of the pharmacist, her career spans pediatric clinical pharmacy, clinical research, and pharmacogenomics with leadership roles at University of Chicago Medical Center and PipelineRx. She received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, is a Board Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist and completed a Pediatric Specialty Pharmacotherapy Residency at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Kevin has a long history in the life sciences industry having worked in technical product support, product management and marketing at several key suppliers such as Lonza, ATCC, and Life Technologies. He is currently focused on developing Lonza’s participation in the drug discovery market for small molecules. In all his roles, Kevin’s main objective has always been to assist researchers in being more productive by providing tools and solutions that meet the constantly changing market needs.

Dr. Niven Narain is the Chairman, President, and CEO of BPGbio, where his visionary leadership and innovative approach have revolutionized drug discovery and development. Under his guidance, BPGbio has pioneered the NAi Interrogative Biology® Platform, the first biology-first AI drug discovery platform. This cutting-edge platform integrates a proprietary biobank with the world’s fastest supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, enabling AI-driven target nomination, discovery, molecule design, and clinical trial optimization. This platform has delivered over 100 drug and diagnostic targets, with notable advancements in oncology, metabolic, rare, and CNS diseases. BPGbio's lead drug candidate, BPM31510 IV, is in Phase 2b trials for glioblastoma multiforme and pancreatic cancer, demonstrating significant increases in patient survival. Dr. Narain's leadership at BPGbio has also led to the identification of novel "undruggable" targets, such as Ubiquitin-Conjugating Enzymes (E2s), which have advanced programs in oncology, cardiology, and neurology. His commitment to integrating cutting-edge technology with deep biological insights has positioned BPGbio as a leader in the biopharmaceutical industry. Beyond his critical contributions at BPGbio, Dr. Narain influences global healthcare through strategic initiatives and partnerships with organizations like NASA, the DoD, and Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center. His extensive publication record and collaborations with academia and industry reflect his dedication to advancing medical science. With over 400 issued and pending patents, Dr. Narain’s contributions underscore his commitment to driving innovation and improving patient care. Dr. Narain's pioneering work continues to shape the future of healthcare, setting new standards in drug discovery and development.

Annie Yim is a computational biologist with a PhD from Max Planck Institute. She has dedicated her career to harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and data science in order to drive innovation in biology. Currently serving as a Senior Data Scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, she now focuses on using state-of-the-art AI technologies and machine learning approaches to accelerate drug discovery and development processes.

I am a biochemist & group leader of the RNA Biology team at Evotec. I am overseeing operations of the RNA Biology unit, with the focus on small molecule targeting of RNA and mRNA therapeutics projects. This comprises all organizational aspects of running a highly competitive unit in a fast growing field of research. I am acting as the lead in matrixed teams concentrated on early drug discovery projects on RNA targets/therapeutics. With an innovative mind and a clear vision, we create novel platforms for drug discovery efforts, enabling new Biology. In our external collaborations, I am also lucky to interact with amazing clients (from start-up to big pharma). And hence could participate in projects with a wide variety, from hit finding to clinical candidate.

Melanie Homberg studied Biology and performed her PhD and Postdoc research in the field of skin biology at the University of Leipzig. When joining Lonza in 2017, she supported customers using Nucleofector® Technology and primary cells as Product Support Specialist. She is now a global market development manager for Lonza’s Nucleofector® Platform with a focus on high throughput applications, e.g. CRISPR screenings.

Steve earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, San Francisco and did post-doctoral work at Stanford University. For several years, Steve worked at multiple biotechnology companies developing and manufacturing high throughput drug discovery assays. For the last 12 years, Steve has been leading the development of automated protein sample prep workflows for protein quantitation and characterization on the AssayMAP Bravo platform.