Speakers

Masako Imaoka

Masako Imaoka is the Senior Director of Medicinal Safety Research Laboratories at Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. She earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology in 2002, after which she joined Daiichi Sankyo (formerly known as Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.). Masako subsequently obtained her Ph.D. from the Gifu University Joint Graduate School of Veterinary Medicine.

With over 20 years of experience in toxicologic pathology and preclinical toxicity research, Masako has specialized in the evaluation of drug candidate compounds, particularly small molecules aimed at oncology indications. In recent years, she has taken a leadership role in the preclinical safety assessment of TPD modalities.

Veronica Campbell

Veronica Campbell joined Kymera Therapeutics in November 2016 and currently serves as Senior Director of Immunology. She has over 20 years of experience in early drug discovery and translational medicine including efforts to advance programs from lead optimization to development candidate and has contributed significantly in multiple IND submissions. Prior to Kymera, she held positions in early discovery and translational medicine at Infinity Pharmaceuticals and Millenium Pharmaceuticals, as well as early-stage biotechnology companies. While at Infinity Pharmaceuticals, she worked on proof-of-concept human trials that led to the approval of Copiktra®(duvelisib) for the treatment of relapsed or refractory CLL/SLL. Veronica earned her degree in Sciences from Northeastern University.

Rohan Beckwith

Rohan Beckwith, Ph.D. is Senior V.P. Chemistry at Neomorph Inc., bringing over 20 years of experience in Drug Discovery, 11 in the field of TPD. Prior to Neomorph, Rohan served as Director, Medicinal Chemistry at Novartis. There, Rohan established a molecular glue degrader initiative, led the glue degrader platform, seeded several molecular glue degrader programs and delivered a clinical candidate. In addition to developing molecular glue degraders for CRBN and DCAF15, he also demonstrated that VHL could function as an effective glue ligase system. In addition, Rohan has worked on over 20 research projects across various therapeutic areas, such as HECT E3 ligase inhibitors, modulators of RNA processing and spinal muscular atrophy. He has led multi-disciplinary teams in chemical biology and target identification efforts, as well as hit-to-lead and lead optimization. Rohan conducted postdoctoral training with Prof. Huw Davies in the field of C-H activation, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, U.K.

Lauren Albrecht

Lauren Albrecht is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The Albrecht lab focuses on the discovery of natural lysosomal pathways and inducible degrader modalities. Albrecht received her BS in Chemistry at the University of California San Diego. Her doctoral work was completed at Northwestern University studying protein methylation in skin and heart diseases. Albrecht focused on developmental biology in her postdoctoral studies at the University of California Los Angeles with Edward M De Roberis. Since starting her lab in 2021, Albrecht identifies protein methylation is a degradative modification for lysosomes, which can be exploited for targeted protein degradation. This work has been featured in PNAS, the Journal of Cell Biology, Nature Chemical Biology, Cell Reports, and Science Advances. This research has been enabled by funding by the NIGMS MIRA, the Sloan Foundation, Ono Pharmaceutical, the Cystinosis Research Foundation.

Jialiang Wang

Jialiang Wang, PhD, is the executive vice president of operation at Cullgen. He joined Cullgen upon its inception and since then led the internal research efforts. Prior to Cullgen he spent over 10 years in academic research, most recently as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His laboratory at Vanderbilt centered on cancer heterogeneity, mechanisms of drug resistance, and development of experimental therapeutics. His work pioneered numerous important discoveries in cancer stem cells and novel target identification in cancers. Jialiang received his PhD degree in 2005 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. After completing postdoctoral training at Duke University, Jialiang joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University in 2010.

Chinatsu Sakata-Sakurai

Chinatsu Sakata-Sakurai is Executive Vice President and Head of Oncology Research at Astellas Pharma Inc., leading global efforts to develop innovative cancer therapies. With over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, she has driven strategic oncology portfolios and advanced new modalities like targeted protein degradation. Chinatsu holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacy from Gifu Pharmaceutical University and an Executive MBA from Kellogg School of Management. She is dedicated to scientific excellence, collaboration, and building diverse teams to create breakthrough medicines for patients worldwide.

Tasuku Ishida

Tasuku Ishida received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2005. After completing his Ph.D., he joined Eisai, where he worked as a medicinal chemist for more than 19 years. In 2019, he spent three years at the University of Dundee, collaborating with Professor Alessio Ciulli on the development of novel protein degraders for cancer treatment as part of the Dundee-Eisai collaboration. In 2024, he joined Elix Inc., a company specializing in AI-driven drug discovery, and took a role for Operating Officer & Chief Scientific Officer since June 2025.

Zheng Wang

MD degree from China. PhD in molecular genetics. 16 years of research experience on ubiquitin/SUMO. 6+ years of drug discovery/development experience with molecular glue degraders, PROTACs, and other induced proximity modalities for oncology targets.

Yann Gaston-Mathé

Yann is a seasoned R&D professional, strategy consultant and biotech entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience in pharma (Servier, Ipsen), molecular diagnostics (IntegraGen) and strategy consulting (Capgemini Consulting, BearingPoint, Cepton). He is also a skilled data scientist with several patents and publications in the field of biostatistics and biomarkers discovery and validation. Yann is Co-founder and CEO of Iktos, a leading chemical research Artificial Intelligence company focusing on medicinal chemistry and new drug design. Iktos is developing innovative AI technology based on deep generative models, which enables to design compounds that are optimized in silico to meet all the success criteria of a small molecule drug discovery project.

Suman Shrestha

Dr. Suman Shrestha is a protein scientist specializing in protein-protein interactions within targeted protein degradation and small molecule drug discovery. He recently completed four years of postdoctoral research at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, supported by the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre Postdoctoral Fellowship. During his postdoc, he led innovative projects including the development of ProtacID, a novel method to identify protein interactors of endogenous targets using PROTACs. He also contributed to recruiting FBXO22 to induce degradation of the histone methyltransferase and oncogene NSD2. Dr. Shrestha holds a PhD in Quantitative Biology from the University of Texas at Arlington and has published several papers advancing protein science.

Sang Hyun Lee

Sang Hyun is Vice President at Orum Therapeutics with over 20 years of experience in cancer biology and drug development across academia and industry. He has led discovery programs across multiple modalities—including small molecules, PROTACs, and Degrader-Antibody Conjugates (DACs)—targeting a range of cancer-related molecules. Previously, he held scientific roles at Prelude Therapeutics, Arvinas, and Incyte, contributing to IND filings, clinical candidate nominations, and translational research to advance novel cancer therapies. Sang Hyun earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas and completed his postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Minsoo KIM

Dr. Minsoo Kim is an Associate Professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo, where she investigated the role of ubiquitin ligases in cancer. Her current research focuses on the bacterial ubiquitin system and its impact on cancer development and infectious diseases. By exploring how bacterial pathogens hijack host ubiquitin signaling, her work aims to uncover novel therapeutic targets.

Mikihiko Naito

After granted Ph.D. degree from the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo, Dr. Naito started his career at the Cancer Institute, Japanese Foundation in Cancer Research. Then, he was engaged in the Institute of Applied Microbiology, the University of Tokyo, as an assistant professor. In 2009, he became a head of the division of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the National Institute of Health Sciences in Japan and started the research on TPD technologies with SNIPER compounds. Since 2020, he has been a project professor of the Social Cooperation Program of Targeted Protein Degradation at the University of Tokyo.

Masato Kanemaki

Dr. Kanemaki received his Ph.D. in 2001 from Chiba University in Japan. He then moved to the CRUK Manchester Research Institute as a postdoctoral fellow and used a ts-degron technology to study all essential genes of previously unknown function in budding yeast. In 2006, he moved to Osaka University as an Assistant Professor, where he developed the auxin-inducible degron for use in animal cells. In 2010, he moved to National Institute of Genetics, first as an Associate Professor and then from 2016 as a full professor. His group has applied the degron technology to many areas of cell biology, focussing on chromosome replication in his own group. In 2022, he became a Professor at the University of Tokyo, whilst still keeping his lab at National Institute of Genetics.

Hiroyuki Kogai

2015: Completed Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo
2015: Joined Eisai Co., Ltd.
2015–Present: Engaged in drug discovery projects in oncology
2020–Present: Focused on research and development of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and targeted protein degraders

Hidetomo Yokoo

Hidetomo received his Ph.D. in 2019 from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (Institute of Science Tokyo). He then began his research career as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Health Sciences, focusing on the synthesis of small molecules and peptides for PROTAC technology. In 2021, he joined Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine as an assistant professor and acquired expertise in peptide-based nanoparticles and their application to drug delivery systems. In 2023, he returned to the National Institute of Health Sciences as a Researcher in the Division of Organic Chemistry, and was recently appointed as Chief in 2025.

Henrik Daub

Dr. Henrik Daub is a founder and the Chief Scientific Officer of NEOsphere Biotechnologies, a Munich-based company specializing in high-throughput proteomics to advance degrader drug discovery. With over 20 years of industry experience, he is a pioneer in proteomics-based drug discovery. Prior to founding NEOsphere, he was Senior Vice President Science & Technology at Evotec, where he led high-throughput proteomics on industrial-scale platforms and global target discovery efforts for protein degradation. He also served as a group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and co-founded Kinaxo Biotechnologies. Dr. Daub holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Max Planck Institute and is a Professor of Biochemistry at the Technical University Munich.

HAI RAO

Dr. Rao is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the Southern University of Science and Technology (Shenzhen, China). Formerly a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center, his research focuses on the application and function of ubiquitin-mediated degradation for nearly 30 years. His work has been consistently funded by NIH, DOD, the American Cancer Society, and multiple private foundations. Research from his laboratory has been published in leading journals such as Nature，PNAS，JMC, Oncogene. In recent years, his lab has developed single amino acids based PROTACs with distinct advantages.

Koichi Ito

Koichi Ito, Ph.D., is a Senior Director at Prelude Therapeutics, where he leads Biology Drug Discovery and Translational Research. Since joining Prelude in 2018, he has played a key role in advancing innovative therapeutic approaches. Koichi completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York from 2012 to 2018. His postdoctoral research focused on identifying novel therapies for patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), supported by funding from Susan G. Komen and Pfizer. He obtained his Ph.D. in Cancer Biology and Immunology from Griffith University in Australia in 2012.

Ken Yamada

Ken is Associate Director of Frontier Chemistry at Novartis. Ken obtained B.S. in chemistry at Brown University, M.S. in organic chemistry at UCLA, and PhD at University of Tokyo. He has over 20 years of experience in drug discovery and contributed to number of development candidates and clinical stage molecules in cardiovascular, immunology and hematology indications. In the past decade, Ken’s research interests evolved around drugging the undruggables by combination of novel modalities and technologies. In particular, he was an early adaptor of TPD at Novartis and, to harness its full potential, spearheaded an internal incubator project that built microfluidic-based cellular DEL platform from ground up. Most recently, Ken is co-leading the efforts to leverage AI/ML to accelerate medicinal chemistry at Novartis.

Hyunsun Jo

He received his B.S and Ph.D. degrees in Biological Sciences from Seoul National University and performed post-doctoral research at Gladstone Institute at UCSF. Prior to joining biotech industry, he has over 14 years of experience in basic and applied research institute in life science. He started consulting activities for start-ups and small companies in biotech and healthcare sector more than four years in the bay area (global sales/marketing strategy, investment opportunity from US investor, distribution, and competitive strategies) and participated in founding several early-stage start-ups. He is the former co-founder and CEO of Labqna (web platform for the right experimental materials between researchers using database and machine learning technologies) and he also served as a founding partner for Embedbio (The early-stage Investment company to operate an innovative incubator platform for promoting the efficiency for research/idea/technology commercialization in biotech).

Ian Churcher

Ian was one of the pioneers of the therapeutic PROTAC field through his 2012 collaboration with Prof Craig Crews & Alessio Ciulli when leading the GSK PROTAC group (2012-2017) including the publication of the landmark 2015 Nature Chemical Biology paper and advancing a portfolio of PROTACs towards the clinic. Subsequently, Ian has also been CSO at TPD biotech Amphista therapeutics, advancing a series of DCAF16-dependent degraders towards the clinic. Ian also has extensive experience of medicinal chemistry & chemical biology leadership from roles at Merck & GSK across many therapy areas including neuroscience, oncology & inflammation. Since 2024, Ian has been an independent consultant providing advice in TPD and other areas to a range of pharma, biotech, academic & investor groups.

Gwenn Hansen

Gwenn M. Hansen, Ph.D. has served as Chief Scientific Officer of Nurix since June 2020 and served as the company’s Senior Vice President, Research from July 2019 through May 2020. Since joining Nurix in 2015, Gwenn has focused on establishing the company’s DNA encoded library technology platform for small molecule discovery in addition to leading the discovery organization. Prior to joining Nurix, Gwenn was an Associate Professor in the Center for Drug Discovery at Baylor College of Medicine and served in a variety of discovery-focused roles at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Hansen holds a B.A. in Biology from Gustavus Adolphus College and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Kanae Gamo

Kanae Gamo is leading overall operations of R&D activities as a CSO. She co-founded FIMECS with her colleagues in 2018 as a curve-out biotech from Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. She started her career at Takeda in 2009. She has expertise in many techniques of molecular biology, genetics, epigenetics and next-generation sequencing in oncology and immunology areas. Through her pharmaceutical experience at Takeda, she increased responsibility of roles across target identification and validation. In parallel with FIMECS work, she got Ph.D. at University of Tsukuba in 2020. Utilizing proprietary drug discovery platform, RaPPIDS, to internal and collaborative programs, FIMECS seeks to provide life-saving medicine to patients all over the world.

Emilia Taylor

Emilia Kvarstein Taylor is a DPhil student in Chemistry Biology at the University of Oxford, specialising in antimicrobial drug discovery. Her research focuses on BacPROTACs, bifunctional molecules that selectively degrade bacterial resistance enzymes by hijacking bacterial proteases, offering a novel strategy to combat antimicrobial resistance. With prior experience at AstraZeneca’s Early Discovery and CVRM teams, Emilia has contributed to cutting-edge projects in PROTAC design, proteomics, and target validation. She has co-authored several publications and was awarded AstraZeneca’s global Science Catalyst Award for innovation in Nano-PROTAC development and crude reaction screening. She also holds degrees in Medicinal Chemistry (BSc, Leeds), Drug Discovery (MRes, Imperial).

Hiroshi Sakai

I hold a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Tokyo and have a background in the pharmaceutical industry, specializing in sales and marketing at a multinational pharmaceutical company. I later joined Boston Consulting Group, where I engaged in various healthcare projects, including new business development and M&A. Now, I am dedicated to accelerating the implementation of scientific and technological advancements in Japan’s academia, actively involved in the biotech venture sector

Masahiko Hayakawa

Masahiko Hayakawa, Ph.D.- Head of Targeted Protein Degradation, Astellas: Masahiko has more than 25 years of pharmaceutical industry experience, beginning his career at Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in 1994, one of predecessor companies of Astellas. Since then, he has led research activities in the field of oncology and urology, creating multiple clinical and launched products. He has served as Head of Modality Management, Modality Research Laboratories and Head of Venture Unit Tumor Directed Inhibition. Today, he serves as the Vice President, Head of Targeted Protein Degradation, where he’s leading research on Targeted Protein Degradation. He graduated from Nagoya University’s Faculty of Science. He holds a doctorate from Tokyo University of Science.

Jose S. Santos

Jose S. Santos, Ph.D. has served as a Senior Director in Early Discovery at Nurix since June 2022. Since joining Nurix in 2018, Jose has focused on establishing the company’s Protein Sciences group and advising multiple early drug discovery degrader project teams including the discovery of novel E3 ligases for targeted protein degradation. In addition, Jose serves the Nurix-Gilead degrader alliance in a leadership capacity. In 2022, Jose added the responsibility of leading the DNA encoded library screening group to create a seamless pipeline from quality protein production to the identification of novel small molecule DEL derived ligands resulting from the integration of both groups. Prior to joining Nurix, Jose was a Scientist at DART Neurosciences where he led structural biology drug discovery efforts to discover novel GPCR ligands. Dr. Santos holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Michigan.

Juliet Williams

Juliet is currently Head of Research at Kymera Therapeutics, where she is responsible for building the portfolio and delivering developmental candidates and INDs for the clinic. She has more than 20 years of drug discovery experience and has contributed to multiple INDs and medicines during her time at Novartis, Sanofi, Millennium, and Curis. Prior to Kymera, Juliet was the Head of Oncology Biology and Small Molecule Drug Discovery at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge and served in other leadership positions at both Novartis and Sanofi. Juliet holds a degree in Natural Sciences (Biochemistry) from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Developmental Biology from University College London. Juliet subsequently completed a Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship at University College London in Developmental Biology.

Hideyoshi Fuji

Hideyoshi Fuji is Senior External Advisor, Japan Operations at Iktos. Hideyoshi spent 13 years at Astellas Pharma Inc. in 2009-2021 as an expert in computational chemistry and chemoinformatics, and have led AI-driven drug discovery projects. Hideyoshi participated in the launch and operation of the MELLODDY consortium to develop a cutting-edge federated learning platform for drug discovery. After his career in Astellas Pharma, Hideyoshi founded a company named ChemoInfo in 2022. Hideyoshi holds the degree of PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Pharmacist License in Japan, and was certified as a Super Creator under the MITOU program in 2006 and studied high-performance molecular simulations for drug discovery under the Junior Research Associate program at RIKEN in 2007-2009.

Takahiro Iwasaki

Takahiro Iwasaki is a leader of protein purification group in TechnoPro R&D Kobe Research Center at TechnoPro Inc. He has been contributing as a protein scientist to analyze intermolecular interaction of proteins from E.coli, pichia, insect cells, mammalian cells and cell-free expression system. He got his PhD from Hiroshima University, and worked as a postdoc in cell biology at University of Massachusetts medical school. In Ehime University, he was engaged in the construction and screening of the genome-wide proteome array using wheat germ cell-free expression technology, which contains 23,000 human proteins including 600 GPCRs and 570 E3 ubiquitin ligases.

Byron DeLaBarre

Byron DeLaBarre holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from McMaster University (Canada) and did postdoctoral work at Stanford University (USA) as an HHMI fellow. He is an experienced drug discovery scientist with a successful track record of discovering and developing therapeutic molecules. He is a co-inventor on multiple patents for several compounds in the clinic including three FDA approved drugs. After positions held at Millennium/Takeda, Agios & Nimbus he founded and runs a successful global biotech consulting company. He currently serves as the Head of Platform Discovery at Pin Therapeutics (S. Korea).

James Palacino

James Palacino has nearly 20 years of oncology drug discovery and development experience in both pharma (Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research) and biotech (H3 Biomedicine and currently as VP & Head of Biology at Orum Therapeutics). His R&D expertise includes both small molecule and antibody-drug-conjugate therapeutic modalities. He has led projects at stages from early discovery, through translational research, through candidate selection, IND-enabling and submissions, and partnered with clinical development for Phase 1/2 trials.

Lingbing Sun

Dr. Lingbing Sun joined HD Biosciences since 2010 and currently holds Senior Director at Hits Discovery Department. He leads in vitro pharmacology teams, providing research service covering from protein production, biochemistry, biophysics, cellular biology, to target validation and mechanism study. Under his leadership, the TPD Platform at HD Biosciences started from 2017 and has supported for over 50 clients to deliver more than 100 projects successfully.

Agustina Rodriguez-Granillo

Agustina Rodriguez-Granillo is a Sr Principal Scientist at Schrödinger, where she leads the Applications Science team in the Northeast region of the US. Agustina got her PhD in Biochemistry at Rice University, and after a Postdoc in computational protein design at Rutgers University, she joined the Modeling group at Merck & Co. In 2018 she joined Schrödinger, where she has been working on developing workflows for bifunctional degrader modeling and design.

Philip Chamberlain

Phil Chamberlain is Co-founder, President and CEO of Neomorph, Inc., a molecular glue discovery company based in San Diego, California. Phil obtained his BA and D.Phil. degrees from the University of Oxford before traveling to the U.S. to work at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research

Foundation. Phil joined Celgene in 2007. At Celgene, Phil was responsible for several fundamental scientific breakthroughs on the ‘molecular glue’ action of thalidomide analogs, including the structural basis for cereblon glue activity, the discovery of the neosubstrate ‘structural degron’, and the molecular basis for thalidomide teratogenicity. Phil has published work on targeted protein degradation in journals including Nature and Science and was the recipient of the Celgene John Jackson leadership award.

Behnam Nabet

Behnam Nabet, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Human Biology Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. He received his B.A. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Northwestern University. He performed his postdoctoral studies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Nabet’s laboratory is focused on developing strategies to target oncogenic signaling by controlling protein homeostasis. He pioneered the development of a versatile technology platform known as the dTAG system to rapidly degrade any target protein. Dr. Nabet’s work has led to the development of selective agents targeting cancer drug targets including CDK11, FAK, PIN1, and DCLK1. These promising compounds inhibit critical vulnerabilities and are under continued development as novel therapeutics. Dr. Nabet has been recognized with several scientific honors, including a Claudia Adams Barr Program for Innovative Cancer Research Award and an NIH/NCI K22 Transition Career Development Award.

Hirokazu Arimoto

Dr. Arimoto is a professor of Chemical Biology at Tohoku University, with a B.A. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Keio University. Since joining Tohoku in 2005, his research has focused on understanding antibacterial autophagy and its applications. His laboratory’s work has led to the development of AUTACs, the first autophagy-based bifunctional degraders, which can target and degrade specific proteins and impair fragmented mitochondria. Dr. Arimoto’s research has far-reaching implications for treating bacterial infections and neurodegenerative diseases.

Ryosuke Shirasaki

Dr. Ryosuke Shirasaki graduated from Teikyo University School of Medicine and became a hematologist specializing in multiple myeloma; since 2016, he has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute studying resistance mechanisms in myeloma. One of his works was the discovery of resistance mechanisms of protein degrader, and he reported on comparing CRBN- and VHL- degrader resistant mechanisms and CRBN- VHL- degrader sequential therapy. He is currently a member of the Multiple Myeloma Guideline Committee of the Japanese Society of Hematology.

David Komander

David Komander studied in Germany and Scotland, working on protein kinase structures during his PhD in Dundee. As a postdoc in London, he initiated work on tumour suppressor deubiquitinases, leading to the first structures on CYLD and A20. Focussing on E3 ligases, ubiquitin binding domains and deubiquitinases, he went on to set up his own highly successful research group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. He was recipient for the Lister prize in 2012 and became an EMBO member in 2014.
At the end of 2018 David Komander moved to Australia to become head of the newly founded Ubiquitin Signalling Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Parkville.

Meng Ling Choong

I have extensive knowledge of drug discovery workflow, particularly in high throughput drug screening and early drug discovery. By leveraging my expertise, I provide valuable guidance and support to my clients in their quest to discover life-saving new drugs. I can assist them in selecting the most promising drug targets, designing and executing effective screening assays, and interpreting and analyzing the resulting data. With my help, my clients can more efficiently and effectively navigate the drug discovery process, increasing the likelihood of discovering novel and effective therapeutics that can improve and save the lives of patients.

Tomohiro Yoshinari

Tomohiro Yoshinari joined Astellas in 2012 as a medicinal chemist. He has more than ten years of experience in small molecule drug discovery, including more than seven years of experience in TPD (Targeted Protein degradation) research. Through his experience in drug discovery and TPD research, he has expertise in molecular design of bifunctional molecules as well as conventional small molecules and has contributed research as a lead medicinal chemist in several drug discovery programs. He received Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2010 from Tokyo Institute of Technology, and then completed postdoctoral training at ETH Zurich.

Nan Ji

Nan Ji, PhD, is co-Founder, President, and CEO of PAQ Therapeutics, a biotech company　focusing on the development of autophagy-based degraders. He has 15 years of drug　discovery experience. Before PAQ, he was VP of Chemistry at Kymera Therapeutics, where he led/contributed to 3 protein degrader INDs. Nan started his industry career at Novartis and subsequently spent two years at Mitobridge. Nan obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Harvard University.

Takumi Ito

Takumi Ito is currently an visiting associate professor at Tokyo Medical University. He received his PhD in Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology). From 2008 to 2012, he was a researcher at Tokyo Institute of Technology. From 2012 to 2013, he worked as an Assistant Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Then, he joined the faculty at Tokyo Medical University. His current research interests are small molecule-induced protein degradation and molecular mechanisms of cereblon- binding drugs.

Minoru Ishikawa

1990-1996 B.Eng./ M.Eng. Tokyo Institute of Technology
2006 Ph.D. The University of Tokyo
1996-2008 Researcher, Meiji Seika Kaisha. Ltd.
2008-2019 Assistant Professor/ Lecturer/ Associate Professor, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, The University of Tokyo
2019-present Professor, Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University

Danette L. Daniels

Danette L. Daniels, Ph.D. is a Vice President of the Protein Degrader Platform at Foghorn Therapeutics developing therapeutic degraders in the areas of epigenetics and oncology. She was an early leader in the field of targeted protein degradation, pioneering approaches to monitor cellular kinetics of degradation, understand mechanism of action, and most recently, co-developing a new PROTAC modality. She received her PhD in Biophysics at Yale University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford School of Medicine studying the Wnt signaling pathway.

Craig Crews

Dr. Crews is the John C. Malone Professor of MCDB and professor of Chemistry and Pharmacology at Yale University. He graduated from the U. Virginia with a B.A. in Chemistry and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Biochemistry. On the faculty at Yale since 1995, his laboratory has developed the use of small molecules to control intracellular protein levels. In 2003, he co-founded Proteolix, Inc., whose proteasome inhibitor, Kyprolis™ received FDA approval for the treatment of multiple myeloma. Dr. Crews’ lab is also credited with founding the field of ‘Targeted Protein Degradation’ drug development technology, i.e., PROTACs, which has the potential to target currently ‘undruggable’ disease causing proteins. In 2013, Dr. Crews launched the New Haven-based biotech venture, Arvinas, Inc.

Manfred Koegl

Manfred Koegl is a director in Oncology Research in Vienna, working on the discovery and implementation of new therapeutic concepts in cancer. Presently, his team focuses on targeted protein degradation in cancer cell signaling.
Before 2010, he worked at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. He has worked at several small biotech companies in Heidelberg, including Phenex Pharmaceuticals. Manfred Koegl studied biology in Vienna and received his PhD in cell biology in 1994 at the EMBL, Heidelberg.

Miklos Bekes

Miklós is Associate Director of Platform Biology at Arvinas, leading the Degrader Mechanisms Group, tasked with the discovery and characterization of novel small molecule ligands and PROTAC® protein degraders in the expanding TPD landscape. Prior to Arvinas, Miklós worked at Nurix Therapeutics, and conducted his post-doctoral studies in the ubiquitin space in New York City at New York University and at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Miklós earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Pathology from the University of California, San Diego conducting studies on ubiquitin’s cousin, SUMO. A lifelong scientific fan of #ubiquitin, he is passionate about using our mechanistic understanding of a cell’s degrader machinery to advance small molecule drug discovery and development in targeted protein degradation with the ultimate goal of potentially delivering benefit to patients.

Michael Plewe

Michael Plewe is SVP – Medicinal Chemistry at Cullgen Inc., a company dedicated to the development of novel E3 ligands for targeted protein degradation in oncology. Before joining Cullgen in 2018, he was Head of Chemistry at Arisan Therapeutics, a start-up focused on developing novel treatments for neglected viral diseases. Prior to Arisan, he was an Associate Research Fellow at Pfizer Inc. working in multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, ophthalmology, diabetes, and infectious diseases. He was a medicinal chemist at Agouron and at Vical, a gene therapy company. Dr. Plewe completed his postdoctoral training at the University of California at Irvine and earned his Ph. D. and Diploma in organic chemistry from the University of Konstanz in Germany.

Genfu Chen

Dr. Genfu Chen is an Executive Director at WuXi AppTec Co. Ltd. where he leads a team in research and providing services and solutions in the areas of in vitro ADME and PK to support drug discovery and development. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Pharmacology from Fudan University and earned his Ph.D. degree in Toxicology/drug metabolism from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences/US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Prior to joining WuXi AppTec, his professional experiences include Abbott Laboratories, In Vitro Technologies, and NCTR of US FDA.
He is currently Board of Directors for Chinese Society for the Study of Xenobiotics and an expert for drug-drug interactions (DDI) for NMPA’s guidance for DDI and ICH M12.

Keynote Speakers

Invited Speakers

Additional Speakers Coming Soon!!