The Webinar Series will take place bi-weekly on: Thursdays
12 pm noon (Eastern Time)
9 am (Pacific Standard Time), 5 pm (British Summer Time), 6 pm (Central European Summer Time)
You can join the webinar by Zoom.
Some seminars might be recorded and accessible for a limited time.
October 1st, 2020
History and future of thalidomide analogs in human health
Webinar registration:
https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9u0juWWIQ3CeI__ty_rflw
Host: Katherine Donovan
Phil Chamberlain
Phil obtained his B.A. 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 (GNF). At GNF Phil supported and led projects in serious respiratory and inflammatory disease and solved multiple novel structures. Phil joined Celgene in 2007 and built and led the Structural and Chemical Biology department, most recently as Executive Director, Protein Homeostasis and Structural Biology. Phil was responsible for several fundamental scientific breakthroughs on the mechanism of action of thalidomide analogs, including the structural basis for cereblon recruitment and the definition of the neosubstrate ‘structural degron’. Phil led the construction of the cereblon modulator platform at Celgene, the pioneering drug discovery effort in the ‘molecular glue’ field. Phil has published work on targeted protein degradation in journals including Nature, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology and Nature Chemical Biology. Phil was the recipient of the John W. Jackson leadership award.
October 15th, 2020
PROTACs: The Past, Present and Future of Targeted Protein Degradation
Webinar registration:
https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_HWGMFH_NS_-qLfplWFifFg
Host: Radoslaw Nowak
Craig Crews
Craig Crews is the American Cancer Society and John Malone Professor of MCDB, Chemistry, and Pharmacology at Yale University. For the past twenty years, his lab has pioneered the new field of ‘Targeted Protein Degradation’, i.e., PROTACs, as a novel therapeutic modality that has the potential to target currently ‘undruggable’ disease-causing proteins. In 2013, Dr. Crews founded the New Haven-based biotech venture, Arvinas, Inc., which is testing the first PROTAC-based drugs in clinical trials for prostate and breast cancer. Dr. Crews has received numerous awards and honors, including the Ehrlich Award for Medicinal Chemistry (2014), the National Cancer Institute R35 Outstanding Investigator Award (2015), the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research (2017), the Khorana Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry( 2018), the Pierre Fabre Award for Therapeutic Innovation (2018), and the Pharmacia-ASPET Award for Experimental Therapeutics (2019).
October 29th, 2020
TBA
Webinar registration:
https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EwW5hTCjTrWDrclUCt3yWw
Host: Xiaoxi Liu / Alyssa Verano
Nathanael Gray
Nathanael Gray, PhD, is the Nancy-Lurie Marks Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He also leads the Dana-Farber Program in Chemical Biology. Dr. Gray’s research centers on drug development and medicinal chemistry related to targeted therapies for cancer. Four drugs that he has had a hand in developing have already been approved the US Food and Drug Administration or are currently in clinical trials. Before joining Harvard and Dana-Farber, Dr Gray was director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. He earned his PhD degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Alessio Ciulli
November 19th, 2020
Reimagining Druggability using Chemoproteomic Platforms
Webinar registration:
https://dfci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IgnG5R2VSseCnikqf-v_1A
Host: Breanna Zerfas
Dan Nomura
Dan Nomura is a professor in the Departments of Chemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology, and Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the director of the Novartis-Berkeley Center for Proteomics and Chemistry Technologies focused on using chemoproteomic platforms to tackle the undruggable proteome. Dr. Nomura is also the co-founder for Frontier Medicines. Dr. Nomura is an editor for Cell Chemical Biology. He earned his B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology and Ph.D. in Molecular Toxicology with Professor John Casida at UC Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute in chemical physiology with Professor Ben Cravatt before returning to UC Berkeley as a faculty member in 2011. Among his honors are selection as a Searle Scholar, American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, and the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research ASPIRE Award.Research in the Nomura Research Group is focused on reimagining druggability using chemoproteomic platforms to discover new disease therapies.