Mikołaj Słabicki

MGH/DFCI/Broad Institute

Expanding the human zinc finger degrome targeted by glutarimide analogs through CRBN

Mikołaj Słabicki earned his Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. Dr. Słabicki then conducted his post-doctoral research as a Marie Skłodowska Curie Scholar in Dr. Benjamin Ebert’s laboratory at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and in Stefan Fröhling’s laboratory at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. Mikołaj Słabicki later became a Group Leader in the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute, a member of Dr. Benjamin Ebert’s Laboratory, and a Senior Staff Scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In the summer of 2024, Mikołaj began a faculty position at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center. His laboratory aims to expand the druggable proteome by employing functional genomics, high-throughput screening, chemical biology, cell biology, and biochemical techniques to identify and characterize new molecular glue degraders and novel mechanisms of targeted protein degradation.

Samantha Bevill

DFCI

Tumor-specific PROTACs that exploit amplification of the MDM2 E3 ubiquitin ligase.

Samantha Bevill, PhD is a research fellow in the Bernstein and Qi labs at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Her research interests are rooted in understanding fundamental mechanisms of tumor biology that can be leveraged to design selective cancer therapeutics. She received her B.S. in Biology from Clemson University in 2012 and her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2018. Her doctoral work in Dr. Gary Johnson’s lab used proteomic techniques to identify compensatory signaling pathways responsible for adaptive resistance to targeted kinase inhibitor therapies in breast cancer. As a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Bradley Bernstein’s laboratory, she led a large project that sought to define the transcriptional regulatory landscape of liposarcoma. Her work defined a novel P53-independent role for MDM2 occupancy across the genome. This work defines supraphysiologic MDM2 as having a novel role in highly amplified tumors and revealed MDM2 high cells mediate therapeutic resistance. Concurrent to this work, she has collaborated closely with the lab of Jun Qi to establish new therapeutic strategies for selective targeting of highly MDM2-amplified tumor subpopulations using PROTAC degraders.

Pamela Ting

Novartis

A molecular glue degrader of the WIZ transcription factor for fetal hemoglobin induction.

Pam is an Associate Director at Novartis Biomedical Research where she leads internal and external collaboration teams to develop therapies for classical hematology and hematologic malignancies. Pam has broad expertise in drug development from target discovery to IND and experience across multiple innovative platforms including degraders, cell and gene therapy. She received her B.A. in Molecular & Cellular Biology from University of California, Berkeley, her Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from University of California, Los Angeles, studying the regulation of BCR-ABL in chronic myelogenous leukemia, and studied allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation as a postdoctoral fellow at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation.

Liron Bar-Peled

MGH

An Omics Approach to Drug Discovery

Liron received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the University of Georgia in 2004. Liron received his PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he used advanced cellular and molecular techniques to uncover how nutrients are sensed by the mTORC1 pathway in the laboratory of David Sabatini. In 2013 as a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral fellow, he joined the laboratory of Ben Cravatt at the Scripps Research Institute to understand how cancer cells respond to oxidative stress. Employing chemical, proteomic and biochemical approaches, Liron revealed new druggable components of the NRF2 antioxidant response pathway uncovering new mechanisms by which NRF2 regulates metabolic pathways. In early 2019, Liron joined the Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine in Biological and Biomedical Sciences.

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