Bi-weekly: Thursdays, 12 pm EDT/EST, 9 am PT/PST, 5 pm BST/BDT, 6 pm CEST/CET
https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m7JJaw52T8yZYt8-ykL6UQ
Some seminars were recorded and accessible for a limited time on our youtube channel.
Upcoming Speakers
April 16th, 2026
Host: Zuzanna Kozicka / Sean Gao
Hong-Yu Li
University of Texas Health Science Center
Endocytic Medicinal Chemistry: Overcoming Delivery Barriers in Induced-Proximity Therapeutics.
Dr. Hong-yu Li is a medicinal chemist and drug hunter trained at the University of Tokyo (Ph.D.), with postdoctoral research at Columbia University and Harvard University. He previously worked in oncology drug discovery at Eli Lilly & Company, where he contributed to multiple clinical candidates, including the development of the FDA-approved CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib (Verzenio®).
His academic research, conducted at the University of Arizona, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and currently at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, focuses on achieving translational impact by overcoming fundamental limitations in small-molecule drug design.
In the field of protein degradation, his research group was the first to demonstrate the degradation of previously undrugable targets through DNA double-helix–based molecular recognition, establishing translational feasibility for a new class of degraders. The Li laboratory has also made key chemical contributions, including the identification of 3-phthalimide acid as a cereblon ligand and the development of scalable synthetic methodologies for VHL ligands. More recently, his team discovered that CD36 functions as a receptor mediating the endocytic uptake of PROTACs and other large or polar molecules, leading to the establishment of an endocytic medicinal chemistry framework that addresses a central delivery bottleneck in induced-proximity therapeutics.
Vanessa Narin Dippon
Harvard University
Identification of an Allosteric Site on the E3 Ligase Adapter Cereblon.
Born in San Francisco, California, Vanessa Narin Dippon received her Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Columbia University in 2021 where she studied under Professor Tomislav Rovis. In the Rovis lab, Vanessa studied the directed evolution of monomeric streptavidin rhodium(III) artificial metalloenzyme to catalyzes the formation of enantioenriched d-lactams. Vanessa is currently a PhD candidate and National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow at the Harvard University Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology studying under Professor Christina Woo. Her research utilizes chemical biology, organic synthesis, and mass spectrometry to study the E3 ligase substrate adapter protein cereblon. Specially, Vanessa is investigating the functional contribution of a novel allosteric site on cereblon and its implications for treating hematopoietic malignancies.
April 30th, 2026
Host: Mikolaj Slabicki
Ning Zheng
University of Washington
Orthosteric Molecular Glue (OMG) Inhibitors: A Selective Blockage.
Dr. Ning Zheng obtained his PhD from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 1997 after he attended Fudan University in Shanghai, China. He did his postdoctoral studies at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and joined the faculty at the Department of Pharmacology in the University of Washington in 2002. He is currently Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and an AAAS Fellow. His current research focuses on structural and functional analyses of ubiquitin ligases, their roles in human biology and plant hormone signaling, and their potential in mediating targeted protein degradation for novel therapeutic drug development. A pioneer in Targeted Protein Degradation, he originated the "molecular glue" concept to explain the action of auxin and jasmonate. His research continues to elucidate how this powerful effect is utilized by nature and leveraged for novel therapeutics.
May 14th, 2026
Host: Mikolaj Slabicki
Zoran Rankovic
The Institute of Cancer Research, London UK
Mining the cereblon neosubstrate landscape for cancer drug discovery.
Zoran is a Professor of Chemical Biology and Director of the Centre for Protein Degradation (CPD) at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London UK. Prior to joining the ICR, Zoran was Director of Chemistry at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where he established and directed a productive Targeted Protein Degradation program, which developed novel cereblon warheads, PROTACs, and molecular glue clinical candidates. Before St Jude, Zoran was medicinal chemistry director and research fellow at Eli Lilly, Merck, Schering-Plough, and Organon. Zoran obtained his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds, UK. During his industrial career Zoran directed teams that delivered multiple clinical candidates over a range of therapeutic areas including oncology, neurodegeneration, psychiatry and cardiovascular disorders. Zoran authored and co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and 30 patents, a dozen book chapters and edited two books on drug discovery topics.
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May 28th, 2026
Host: Katherine Donovan / Sean Gao
Bekky Feltham
WEHI
E3 Ligases, From Cellular Regulators to Drug Targets.
Rebecca (Bekky) Feltham is a Laboratory Head at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and co-founder of Ternarx. She has over 20 years’ experience in ubiquitin signalling, E3 ligase biology, and more recently targeted protein degradation (TPD).
Her research focuses on understanding and exploiting the ubiquitin system to enable new therapeutic strategies. She led the development of the E3 Ligase Compendium (the E3-ome), a globally collaborative effort involving more than 40 leading laboratories, creating the first comprehensive, expert-curated map of the human E3 ligase landscape to drive degrader discovery. She also co-developed NanoTACs in partnership with PROMEGA and established tag-targeting degrader platforms for target validation at WEHI, now used by more than 30 research groups nationally.
Ternarx is a biotechnology company developing degrader therapies for cancer and inflammatory disease. At Ternarx, she leads two core platforms, tag-targeting degrader modelling for rapid preclinical target validation, and TissueSAFE, a discovery framework for identifying tissue-selective E3 ligases. Together, these platforms underpin the company’s pipeline and are designed to de-risk therapeutic development at the earliest stages.
Outside the lab, Rebecca is also a mum and a strong advocate for flexible working, which has informed her approach to leadership, resilience, and creating supportive environments.
Vasileios Voutsinos
University of Copenhagen
Mapping degrons in human proteins.
Vasileios Voutsinos is an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen. He completed his PhD in DNA repair and genome stability. During his postdoctoral studies, he switched his focus to the area of proteostasis, specifically trying to map degrons in human cytosolic proteins and transcription factors.
As part of his postdoctoral training, he was a Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar for one year at the University of Washington, where he learned about cutting-edge high-throughput techniques to analyze protein variants using growth and FACS-based assays.
His current research focuses on using these approaches to study the impact of protein mutations on function and abundance, as well as further understanding of human degrons and mechanisms of targeted protein degradation.