Speaker Biographies

Mastering Medicinal Chemistry

Anil Vasudevan, Ph.D., Associate Director II, DISCOVERY CHEMISTRY AND TECHNOLOGY (DCAT), AbbVie

Anil Vasudevan is part of the AbbVie Discovery Chemistry and Technology group in Illinois and currently heads up the Medicinal Chemistry Technologies group where he has responsibilities for Tool and Lead Generation, High Throughput Chemistry, Analysis and Purification Sciences, FBDD Chemistry, Molecular Probes and Chemical Biology. He has worked on lead generation and optimization programs in Metabolic Diseases, Oncology, Neuroscience and Immunology.

Neil Press, Ph.D., FRSC, Director, Global Discovery Chemistry, Novartis

Dr Press studied undergraduate chemistry at Imperial College, London, where he stayed on to complete his PhD research in ‘macrocyclic stereocontrol’ in the labs of Prof Don Craig. He subsequently undertook postdoctoral research with Professor Phil Magnus at the University of Texas in Austin. Here he worked on a total synthesis of calicheamicinone, a potent anti-tumour compound with a particularly elegant mode of action. In 1995 Neil joined the central research laboratories of Ciba-Geigy, Macclesfield, and subsequently moved to the Novartis Horsham research centre after the merger with Sandoz. Neil has worked as a medicinal chemist for 21 years, having led multiple projects from early phase through to clinical compounds. He is currently a Director in Novartis global discovery chemistry and is based in Basel where he leads the chemical genetics and natural products group. Neil’s current interests are in finding new, inventive ways to enable and expedite the target and drug discovery process through chemistry, computation and multidisciplinary collaboration.

Sarah Skerratt, Director, Chemistry, Convergence (a Biogen Company)

Dr Sarah Skerratt joined the Convergence Chemistry and Preclinical Development team as Director of Chemistry in 2016. Prior to that Sarah was a Research Fellow within Pfizer Worldwide Medicinal Chemistry. In her role at Pfizer, Sarah was Drug Discovery Program Leader for a number of programs with experience ranging from target validation through to the clinic. Sarah has worked in the pain therapeutic area for several years and is an expert in pain medicinal chemistry and early development. Sarah has also led international initiatives within Pfizer on molecular design strategies.

Elisabetta Chiarparin, PhD

Dr. Chiarparin is associate director of Oncology Medicinal Chemistry, Head of Analytical and Structural Chemistry at AstraZeneca, Cambridge UK. Dr. Chiarparin has more than 15 years of experience in drug discovery and pharmaceutical research developed at Aventis Pharma (now Sanofi), GSK and Astex Pharmaceuticals in the areas of biophysics, structural biology, structural and physical chemistry. Dr Chiarparin received a master degree in X-ray crystallography and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) methodology under the supervision of Prof. Geoffrey Bodenhausen. Dr. Chiarparin is a member of the External Advisory Board Scientific of IDPbyNMR (Intrinsically disordered Protein by NMR) and of SMASH and Phys Chem Forum Scientific Organizing Committees.

Jonathan Mason, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, Head CADD, Drug Discovery, Heptares Therapeutics Ltd

Responsible for CADD at Heptares Therapeutics Ltd, a GPCR drug discovery and development company, following many years leading groups for computational chemistry and structural biology at Lundbeck (DK), Pfizer (UK), Bristol Myers Squibb (US) and Rhone Poulenc Rorer (Sanofi - UK, France, US).

Scott Webster, Ph.D., Reader and Director, Drug Discovery Core, College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh

Dr Scott Webster is Reader in Drug Discovery and Director of the Drug Discovery Core at the University of Edinburgh. He manages a number of drug discovery projects with both academic and industry components across a variety of disease indications. Current projects include a joint collaboration with GSK DPAc to discover new medicines to treat multiple organ failure and a Sanofi/Genzyme collaboration to discover new medicines for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis. His previous roles include Head of Enzymology at PanTherix Ltd, where he was responsible for antimicrobial drug discovery programs employing structure-based design. He has broad experience including medicinal chemistry, protein biochemistry, pharmacology and in vitro screening.

Wolfgang Haap, Ph.D., Expert Scientist, Roche Pharma Research and Early Development, Roche Innovation Center Basel

Wolfgang Haap joined Roche in Basel, Switzerland in 2001. He is working as a project team leader and expert scientist in medicinal chemistry in the field of lead identification and optimization up to clinical candidate selection. Before starting at Roche he spent from 1998 on three years at Ciba in Grenzach, Germany (now BASF) in the research area of the discovery of new antibacterials.

Daniel Hamza, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Chemistry Department, Sygnature Discovery Limited

Dr Daniel Hamza is currently a Senior Research Chemist within Sygnature Discovery’s Chemistry Department. He joined Sygnature in January 2009 from AstraZeneca R&D Charnwood where he spent 3 years as a Research Chemist. Dan gained a BSc joint honours degree in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Imperial College London. He then moved to the University of Sussex, obtaining a DPhil in Organic Chemistry. Dan then undertook three years' post-doctoral research at the University Paris XI.

Kurt Pike, Ph.D., Team Leader, Medicinal Chemistry, AstraZeneca

I am currently a Team Leader in the Oncology Chemistry group at AstraZeneca. I received my undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of Southampton and then remained at Southampton to complete a PhD studying radical cascade reactions under the supervision of Professor Jeremy Kilburn. In 1997 I joined Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, now AstraZeneca, at Alderley Park and have been involved in the delivery of a number of clinical candidates across the Oncology, Diabetes and Inflammation therapy areas. In 2014 I moved to the new Astrazeneca Oncology Chemistry facilities in Cambridge UK where he currently holds the position of Team Leader. My responsibilities include leading all aspects of the Medicinal Chemistry strategy and delivery on multiple drug discovery projects, motivating and developing a large team of Chemists and the efficient and safe running of our South Cambridgshire based laboratory.

Ann Walker, Discovery Partnerships with Academia, GlaxoSmithKline

I joined the Discovery Partnerships with Academia (DPAc) team in 2011 as a medicinal chemistry specialist. Prior to this I’ve been employed in GSK and its precursor companies as a synthetic and medicinal chemist for over 20years. During the course of my career, I’ve contributed medicinal and practical chemistry to a wide range of programmes, including epigenetic targets, kinases, GPCRs and protein:protein interactions for a number of different therapeutic areas.

Preclinical Models for Cancer Immunotherapy and Combinations

David Marc Davies

After graduating from Durham University in 2007 with a First Class Honours degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Marc undertook his PhD at King’s College London in the laboratory of Dr John Maher, where his research focussed on the development of a novel T-cell immunotherapy for the treatment of head and neck carcinoma.

Upon completion of his PhD in 2011, Marc moved to the Department of Haematology in University College London, where he worked on targeting T-cells against novel antigens in haematological malignancies.

Marc returned to King’s College London in 2015, where his research currently focuses on engineering T-cells to survive more effectively in the hostile tumour microenvironment common to many solid malignancies.

Grégory Driessens, Head, in vivo Pharmacology, iTeos Therapeutics

Grégory leads the team responsible for in vivo pharmacology related to iTeos programs. He joined the company in 2013 with a 12 years experience background in immunology, immunotherapy and cancer biology.

Grégory holds a MSc and Ph.D. in Biomedicals Sciences from the Free University of Brussels. He was a post-dotcoral fellow for 3 years in the lab of Thomas Gajewski at UChicago, before coming back to the lab of Cédric Blanpain to study cancer and cancer stem-cell biology.

Grégory has authored 19 peer-reviewed publications and is an inventor in 4 patent applications.

Jia Zeng, Ph.D., Director, Scientific Product Development Pharmacology, PharmaLegacy Laboratories Co., Ltd

Jia Zeng, Ph.D., his responsibilities in PharmaLegacy include the management of daily R&D work, with a focus on new product development in the area of Immune related diseases and immune-therapies. Dr. Zeng was a senior project leader in the Institute of Molecular Medicine University of Oxford, where he set up novel platforms for developing single domain antibody drugs and complex disease animal models. Dr. Zeng hold a Ph.D in immunology from University of Cologne.

Lorenzo Galluzzi, Ph.D.

Lorenzo Galluzzi received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Paris Sud (Paris XI), France, and now works as a research manager in the laboratory of Guido Kroemer. He is particularly fascinated by several aspects of mitochondrial cell death, autophagy, cancer cell metabolism and tumour immunology. He has published more than 280 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and is currently the 6th and youngest of the 30 most-cited European cell biologists (relative to the period 2007–2013).

Dr Alexander Giakoustidis MD PhD

Surgical Training

I was born in Thessaloniki, Greece and I am based in London, UK. I have been trained in general surgery in Greece and worked with an overseas study leave at the Liver Transplantation Department in King's College Hospital, London, UK. After finishing my surgical rotation in Greece and receiving my qualification in surgery, I pursued to gain further experience in Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary (HPB) Surgery in the UK. I have worked in specialized HPB centres in the UK such as the Pancreatic Unit in Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the HPB unit at Hammersmith Hospital (London) and the academic Department of Surgery at the Royal Marsden Hospital (London). Currently my clinical surgical appointment is at the Royal London Hospital (London).

Research

I have conducted research on pre-clinical models of liver and intestinal ischemia/reperfusion injury, targeted treatments in preclinical models of Hepatocellular carcinoma, liver metastases and pancreatic cancer among other, and have published in major surgical and hepatology international journals. I completed a PhD with grade “Excellent” in an experimental surgical protocol concerning the intestinal & liver ischemia/reperfusion injury, at the University Department of Transplantation Surgery, Medical School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Research affiliations

I am a Co-investigator in a number of experimental research protocols regarding Liver ischemia/ reperfusion injury and IL18, IL18Bp, anti-IL16, anti-gdTCR in mice and HCC DEN genesis in mice and testing of targeted therapies. My research affiliations include the Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Surgery and Liver Transplant Department, Hospital Henri-Mondor, Creteil (Paris, France), the Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry (London, UK), the Institute of Hepatology (London, UK) and the Royal Marsden NHS Trust (London, UK), ELPEN research Centre (Athens, Greece). I have won several national and international awards and travel fellowships.

Michael Rugaard Jensen, Ph.D., Director

I have a strong academic background in Oncology Research combined with 12 years of experience in small molecule pharmaceutical Drug Discovery research. I have successfully lead global project teams from lead to FPFV and was involved in filing IND and IMPD regulatory documentation for US (FDA) and EU (EMEA) approval. I currently lead the Novartis Oncology Drug Discovery Pharmacology department in Basel. This is a group of about 35 researchers, associates, postdocs and students in 8 labs focused on target identification, validation, biomarker discovery and profiling using a variety of in vitro and in vivo pharmacology techniques.

Anja Henn, Ph.D., Scientist, Nonclinical Development, Amgen Research (Munich) GmbH

• Dr. Henn is Scientist at the Department of Nonclinical Development at Amgen Research Munich and has been working on the in-vitro pharmacological characterization of bispecific BiTE® antibodies since 2010.
• Formerly, she did her Ph.D. at The Doerenkamp-Zbinden Chair of In-vitro Toxicology and Biomedicine at the University of Konstanz, Germany focusing on neuroinflammation.
• Dr. Henn has studied Technical Biology at the University of Stuttgart, Germany and University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Dinah Duarte, PharmD, MSc , Head, Scientific Evaluation Unit, Directorate of Medicinal Products, INFARMED, Portugal

Head of Scientific Evaluation Unit at INFARMED, I.P. Portuguese regulatory authority for medicines; Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products member at European Medicines Agency; Associate Professor (Lisbon University); member of European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology & Pharmacovigilance; former Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use member. MSc in Regulatory Affairs & Evaluation of Medicines and Specialist in Regulatory Affairs (Portuguese Pharmaceutical Society)

Sylvia F Boj, PhD

Sylvia F Boj received her PhD in 2006 at the University of Barcelona, Spain for her work at the Hospital Clinic in the laboratory of Prof. Jorge Ferrer, where she worked on functional genetic analysis to understand the role of the transcriptional activators HNF1A and HNF4A in the pancreatic beta cells.

With a long term EMBO fellowship, she subsequently joined the Hubrecht Institute (Utrecht, the Netherlands) as a postdoctoral fellow. In the laboratory of Prof. Hans Clevers she first studied the role of TCF7L2 regulating metabolism, using several transgenic mouse models. Then, she established human pancreas organoids from tumor resections in collaboration with the Surgery and Pathology departments from the UMC. In 2014, she started working as a group leader at the HUB foundation for Organoid Technology (Utrecht, the Netherlands). She started leading the Cystic Fibrosis and Pancreatic Cancer Biobank projects. In 2016, she has been appointed as Scientific Director of the HUB foundation, with the ultimate goal of transferring scientific advances of the organoid technology to the development of new drugs by interacting with pharmaceutical companies and developing clinical trials to evaluate the predictive value of organoids for the patient-response to certain treatments.

Sara Colombetti, Ph.D. , Team Leader Immunopharmacology, Pharmacology Department, Roche Innovation Center Zürich

In 2004 I have obtained the Ph.D. degree in Molecular and Cellular biology at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan (Italy) focusing on the characterization of the molecular mechanisms of T cell proliferation and differentiation. I then spent the next 5 years developing cancer CD8 T cell vaccines based on lentiviral vectors and VLP technologies at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (Lausanne Branch, Switzerland) and at Cytos Biotechnology (Schlieren, Switzerland), respectively. In 2007 I received the young investigator award of the Charles Brupbacher foundation for Cancer Research. From 2009 until 2014 I have been leading the In Vivo Models Group at the Roche Innovation Center Zürich (Switzerland), a Roche Oncology site devoted to the development of next generation cancer immunotherapeutics. The activity of my Group focused on the development and immune characterization of translationally relevant preclinical mouse tumor models (syngeneic, spontaneous and humanized models) for in vivo profiling of cancer immuno-therapies

From January 2015 I am leading the Immunopharmacology Group responsible for all in vivo immunopharmacodynamic analyses for anti-cancer immunotherapies at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich. The activity of my Group focuses on multi-parameter immune characterization of preclinical tumour models at baseline and upon treatment, to assess translational relevance of preclinical models and unravel mechanisms of action of anti-cancer immunotherapies in vivo.

Prof. Dr. med. Dieter Saur, Technische Universität München, Department of Internal Medicine II, Ismaningerstr,Germany

Professor Dieter Saur is a Consultant and Senior Group Leader at Technische Universität München (TUM), School of Medicine. His research focuses on how oncogenic signaling networks, tissue damage, the tumor microenvironment and inflammatory pathways contribute to tumor initiation, progression, metastasis and treatment resistance using novel advanced animal models that faithfully recapitulate human cancer. His lab translates this knowledge into novel and effective methods for early tumor detection, cancer subtype specific therapies as well as response prediction strategies.

Prof. Saur completed a medical residency and a medical gastroenterology (GI) and GI oncology fellowship at TUM in 2006. Since 2007 he is a Consultant in Gastroenterology, Hepatology, GI Oncology and Endoscopy and a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Internal Medicine. His clinical interests include translational oncology and imaging studies to improve early detection and treatment response of GI cancer. His clinical practice is at the University Hospital Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich.

Christine Sedlick

Christine Sedlik, PhD is a scientist who started her scientific career on the study of antigen formulation to improve vaccine strategies at the Pasteur Institute, in Paris. Then, she has pursued her research career at the INSERM Unit 932 directed by Sebastian Amigorena at the Institut Curie, in Paris. Her work has been focused on the study of dendritic cell functions and the preclinical development of cancer immunotherapy approaches, based on antigen specific vaccination (DNA, long peptides) and more recently on checkpoint inhibitors. Currently, at the "Translational Immunotherapy team” directed by Dr. Eliane Piaggio, she is also working on the development of innovative mouse models for the evaluation of cancer immunotherapies, including humanized mouse models containing human tumor cells and human immune cells.

Optimizing Leads and Predicting Drug Toxicity

Alexander Amberg, Ph.D., Computational Toxicologist, R&D Preclinical Safety, Sanofi

Alexander Amberg performed his doctoral studies at the department of Toxicology and Pharmacology of the University Wuerzburg and obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemical Toxicology in 2000. In 2001 he joined the early & exploratory safety group of Sanofi and is in this position since, responsible for in silico/computational toxicology analysis globally at Sanofi. Since 2007 he is registered as “European Registered Toxicologist (ERT)” after getting his examination of “Fachtoxikologe DGPT” of the German Society of Toxicology. His major research interests are development of new in silico prediction models for different toxicity endpoints and data management of in-house data in combination with public available toxicity data, to support drug development in research and development. For this he is also member in different internal expert advisory groups as well as external initiatives, like the IMI eTOX consortium (for toxicity data sharing and development of new expert systems for in silico toxicity prediction), the IMI SafeSciMET education program, GTI (genotoxic impurity)/ICH M7 task force and others.

Berengere Dumotier, Ph.D., Secondary Pharmacology Expert, Safety Pharmacology, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research

Bérengère Dumotier completed her PhD in the Cardiology Hospital in Lille, France. She was hired by Novartis in 1999. Berengere gives expert statements to project teams with regard to cardiac safety issues within the Safety Pharmacology group. She is a member of the Preclinical Secondary Pharmacology senior team. She provides guidance for risk assessment/mitigation efforts of drug discovery projects in collaboration with the preclinical safety scientists as well as development, regulatory and clinical colleagues.

Christopher Goldring, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology, MRC Centre for Drug Safety Science, University of Liverpool, U.K.

Chris Goldring has more than twenty years of experience of molecular bioanalysis, working with cell culture and in vivo models. He leads the molecular and cellular toxicology group within the MRC Centre for Drug Safety Science (CDSS), a leading UK centre based at the University of Liverpool, with a critical mass of scientists studying mechanisms of adverse reactions to drugs, and which is the coordinator of the Mechanism-based Improved Prediction of Drug-Induced Liver Injury (MIP-DILI) IMI programme. He plays a leading role in the new IMI project TransQST, which will develop quantitative systems toxicology models to improve our understanding of adverse drug reactions. He is also leading the liver project in the UK Regenerative Medicine Safety platform, developing innovative methods for the assessment of the safety of stem cells and regenerative therapies, including cell labelling using nanoparticles and cell tracking. He has current MRC, IMI, and North-West Cancer research fund support. He is programme director of the Pharmacology degree programme at Liverpool, and he runs Masters teaching programmes on Innovative methods of in vitro safety assessment and Stem Cells in the IMI Safescimet training programme.

Philip Hewitt, Ph.D., Head of Early Investigative Toxicology, Non-Clinical Safety, Merck KGaA

Philip Hewitt originally trained as a Medical Biochemist at the University of Birmingham (1986-1989). He worked as a Research Assistant in the Pharmacology and Toxicology Department at Imperial College, London where he received his PhD in the lab of Dr Sharon Hotchkiss. The main theme of the research project was “percutaneous absorption: metabolic and kinetic parameters”. In 1996, he transferred to The University of California, San Francisco, in the Dermatology Department; and spent 18 months there under the guidance of Prof. Howard Maibach. In 1998 he started a permanent position in the Institute of Toxicology at Merck KGaA in Germany, where he established the Molecular Toxicology Group. He is currently responsible for early cytotoxicity screening, hepatotoxicity methods, biomarker monitoring, CYP induction studies, genotoxicity testing and cytokine screening. He works with several PhD students, on external collaborative projects and is the team representative on several internal pharmaceutical projects.

James J. Hickman, Ph.D., Founding Director, NanoScience Technology Center and Professor, Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science, Material Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Central Florida

James J. Hickman is the Founding Director of the NanoScience Technology Center and a Professor of Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science, Material Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida. Previously, he held the position of the Hunter Endowed Chair in the Bioengineering Department at Clemson University. Dr. Hickman has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemistry, as well as BS and MS from Penn State University in Chemistry. For the past twenty-five years, he has been studying the interaction of biological species with modified surfaces, first in industry and in the latter years in academia. While in industry he established one of the first bioelectronics labs in the country that focused on cell-based sensors and their integration with electronic devices. He has extensive experience in surface modification and surface analysis for biological and neuroscience applications, and the integration of these systems with MEMS devices and components. He is interested in creating hybrid systems for biosensor and biological computation applications and the creation of functional in vitro systems for human body-on-a-chip applications. He has worked at NSF and DARPA in the area of biological computation. He is also the founder and current Chief Scientist of a biotechnology company, Hesperos, that is focusing on cell-based systems for drug discovery and toxicity. He has 112 publications and 18 book chapters, in addition to 26 patents.

Gerry Kenna, Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Director, Safer Medicines Trust and Drug Safety Consultant

Gerry Kenna is Pharmaceutical Director of the Safe Medicines Trust and a Drug Safety Consultant. He promotes the development and implementation of improved human drug safety testing strategies, which take account of the mechanisms by which ADRs may arise and can reduce, refine and replace the use of procedures on animals. These strategies utilise the extensive experience of safety assessment of pharmaceuticals and other chemicals, and of mechanisms that underlie liver toxicity and other human adverse drug reactions (ADRs), he acquired while leading research teams in industry (AstraZeneca, Syngenta and Zeneca) and academia (Imperial College School of Medicine UK, National Institutes of Health USA, King’s College Hospital Medical School UK and the National Institute for Medical Research UK). Dr Kenna has authored or co-authored >100 scientific publications.

Maxime Louet, Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Fellow, Laboratory of Dr. Bruno Villoutreix, Molécules Thérapeutiques in silico (MTi), French National Institute for Health and Medicine Research (INSERM) / University Paris Diderot

Maxime Louet is a bioinformatics expert specialized in structural molecular biology. He finished his PhD in France in biomolecule engineering and chemistry. He was especially interested in the activation mechanism of G-protein Coupled Receptors and their protein partners. He then pursued his research work in Heidelberg (Germany) where he developed an in silico method to elucidate allosteric signals in bio-molecular systems, triggered by various factors, including drug interactions. Currently, he is working in Paris (France) at MTi, Inserm U973 - University Paris Diderot directed by Dr. Bruno Villoutreix. He is interested in protein-drug interactions, especially on anionic channels and drug metabolic enzymes and published 7 articles.

Janne Mannila, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Permeability and in vivo DMPK, Admescope

No bio available.

Philippe Marc, Ph.D., Global Head of Preclinical Informatics, PreClinical Safety, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Philippe Marc obtained a Ph.D. in Computational Science from Paris University before doing a system biology oriented post-doc in Dr. Church’s lab at Harvard Medical School. He then worked for Aventis and Sanofi before joining Novartis 9 years ago. At Novartis, he engaged into knowledge management and new ways to expedite drug safety data analysis in order to achieve high quality decision-making faster.

Jordi Mestres, Ph.D., Head, Systems Pharmacology Group, IMIM-UPF Joint Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics, and Associate Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Spain

Jordi Mestres holds a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Girona. After a post-doctoral stay at Pharmacia & Upjohn in Kalamazoo (Michigan, USA), in 1997 he joined the Molecular Design & Informatics department at N.V. Organon in Oss (The Netherlands) and in 2000 he was appointed Head of Computational Medicinal Chemistry at Organon Laboratories in Newhouse (Scotland, UK). In 2003, he took on his current position as Head of Systems Pharmacology (formerly Chemogenomics) at the IMIM Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona. He is also Associate Professor at the University Pompeu Fabra. In 2006, he founded Chemotargets as a spin-off company of his group. He is also the recipient of the 2006 Corwin Hansch Award from the QSAR and Modelling Society. His research interests focus on the use and development of computational approaches to integrate chemical, biological, and phenotypic spaces and their application to systems chemical biology and drug discovery. He is the author of over 130 publications, 9 patents among them.

Ard C.H. Teisman, Ph.D., Scientific Director, Global Safety Pharmacology, Discovery Sciences, Janssen Research & Development

Ard C.H. Teisman obtained a degree in Biology (1992) at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) with majors in CNS and Pharmaco-chemistry. After finishing his degree he held an interim position as a junior researcher in Asthma Research (dept. of Molecular Pharmacology; University Center for Pharmacy, University of Groningen). In 1998 Ard obtained his PhD at the dept. of Clinical Pharmacology (Faculty of Medicine, University of Groningen) where he explored potential new therapies for the treatment of Heart Failure. Following this he held a Postdoc position in cardio-renal pharmacology. Then in 2001, Ard joined as a research scientist the Center of Excellence for Cardiovascular Safety Research of Janssen Pharmaceutica NV (Beerse, Belgium), a Johnson & Johnson company. Ard assumed roles of increasing responsibility towards his current role as deputy head of global safety pharmacology and group leader of Discovery De-Risking. In his current position he supports many discovery projects across Janssen R&D, guiding the scientists, from a Safety point of view, in their compound selection decisions. In addition, he is actively involved in general safety related study designs, analysis and interpretation, basic research projects and preclinical to clinical translational exercises. Finally, he gives lectures on safety pharmacology both internally and externally (for university students) and is the chair person for the Janssen campus Ethics Committee for Animal Research.

Paul B. Watkins, M.D., Director, Institute for Drug Safety Sciences, Howard Q. Ferguson Distinguished Professor, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Paul B. Watkins is director of the University of North Carolina Institute for Drug Safety Sciences. He is also Professor of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Dr. Watkins is a trained clinical hepatologist and also an accomplished basic and translational investigator in the fields of drug metabolism and hepatotoxicity. He serves as the chair of both the Steering and Genetics Committees for the U.S. Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN) (U01DK065201). He also directs the DILIsim Initiative, which is a public-private partnership involving scientists from 13 major pharmaceutical companies and the FDA. Dr. Watkins is one of the most frequently cited authors in the field of pharmacology according to www.ISIhighlycited.com. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the 2009 Therapeutic Frontiers Award from the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, the 2013 Agilent Therapeutic Frontiers Award, and the 2015 Rawls-Palmer Award for Progress in Medicine from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Maria L.H. Vlaming, Ph.D., Vice President Technoogy, Pluriomics BV

Marijn was trained as a biomedical engineer at the University of Technology in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and obtained her PhD at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) in 2009, with research focused on drug transporters and pharmacokinetics. Since then, she has focused on the translation of scientific knowledge into pharmaceutical and medical applications. As such, she worked at TNO (Zeist, The Netherlands) as senior scientist/project leader on various preclinical and clinical studies in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, technology providers and academia. In 2015 Marijn joined Pluriomics, a Dutch biotech company that delivers innovative hiPSC-derived cell-based models for drug discovery & development. As VP Technology she is responsible for the internal and external R&D activities of Pluriomics, employing Pluricyte® cardiomyocytes for applications in pharmaceutical research.