Webinar: Targeted Protein Degradation Virtual Symposium


Now available on-demand!
Targeted Protein Degradation


Bio-Techne is delighted to welcome leading scientists to talk about their recent research and perspectives in the exciting, fast-moving field of Targeted Protein Degradation.

The symposium will bring together insights on:

  • Critical assessment of the field
  • PROTAC® design, discovery and development
  • Innovative new research tools
  • Expanding the E3 ligase toolbox
We hope you will join us for what will be a fascinating and informative symposium.

Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) is a technology that harnesses small molecule modalities (molecular glues, PROTAC® Degraders, SNIPERS etc) to achieve selective knockdown of target proteins within cells.
Heterobifunctional Degraders represent an exciting new modality, repurposing small molecule ligands to achieve selective degradation (knock-down) of target proteins and offering the potential to expand the druggable proteome.

PROTAC® is a registered trademark of Arvinas Operations, Inc., and is used under license.


TALK SCHEDULE

Time (BST / EDT) Speaker Talk Title
3pm / 10am Dr. Hannah Maple Welcome / Introduction
3:10pm / 10:10am Dr. Milka Kostic Seeing the forest for the trees in targeted protein degradation
3:35pm / 10:35am Dr. Alex Bullock Expanding the toolbox for PROTAC development
4pm / 11am Dr. Cristina Mayor-Ruiz Rational discovery of molecular glue degraders via scalable chemical profiling
4:25pm / 11:25am Short Break
4:30pm / 11:30am Dr. Behnam Nabet


Dr. Fleur Ferguson		 Rapid and direct control of target protein levels with VHL-recruiting dTAG molecules
5pm / 12pm Dr. Nicole Trainor Structure-based approaches to accelerate PROTAC discovery
5:25pm / 12:25pm Dr. Scott Edmondson Lessons Learned in the Design of Oral PROTACs
5:50pm / 12:50pm Dr. Hannah Maple Closing remarks


SPEAKERS


Milka Kostik

Dr. Milka Kostic
Chemical Biology Program Director
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute


Dr. Milka Kostic is the Program Director, Chemical Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In this role, Dr. Kostic supports a vibrant chemical biology program of about 120 scientists (faculty, postdocs, graduate students, staff scientists and technicians), who work tirelessly to develop chemistry-inspired research tools, platforms and strategies, to make new discoveries in basic biology, as well as translate these discoveries into improved clinical practice. Prior to Dana-Farber, Dr. Kostic was the Editor of Cell Chemical Biology and Structure for more than a decade, thus supporting and shaping chemical biology and structural biology communities. Dr. Kostic is a passionate advocate for chemical biology, and its transformative ability to accelerate basic and translational discoveries on the chemistry-biology-medicine continuum. She is also committed to promoting gender equality in society and science, and career development and well-being of early career researchers. Dr. Kostic has been lecturing and coaching scientists on career development and planning, social media use, presentation and communication skills. Additionally, Dr. Kostic has written and presented on a range of chemical biology topics, most notably chemical probe development and validation, covalent inhibitors and targeted protein degradation.
Alex Bullock
Dr. Alex Bullock
Principal Investigator, Structural Genomics Consortium
University of Oxford


Alex Bullock is an Associate Professor at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford and Principal Investigator at the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), an international public-private partnership that aims to catalyse the discovery of new medicines through open access collaborative science. Alex obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge with Sir Alan Fersht. He subsequently held a Wellcome Fellowship for positions with David Baker at the University of Washington, Seattle and later with Sir Peter Ratcliffe at the University of Oxford. In his current post he has gained more than 15 years of experience working on the structural, functional and chemical biology of proteins mediating phosphorylation and ubiquitylation.

Christina Mayor Ruiz

Dr. Cristina Mayor-Ruiz
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine


Cristina Mayor-Ruiz obtained her Ph.D. under the supervision of Óscar Fernández-Capetillo at the CNIO (Madrid) in 2017, exploring mechanisms of resistance to genotoxic and targeted anticancer therapies. In 2018, she joined the group of Georg Winter at CeMM (Vienna) supported by an EMBO and a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowships. Her research interests currently focus on different aspects of targeted protein degradation: cellular effectors, resistance mechanisms, identification of new molecular glues, etc. In addition, she develops chemical-biology approaches to identify and disrupt transcriptional effectors of mutant RAS proteins in cancer. She will start her own group at the IRB Barcelona at the end of 2020, where she plans to explore the multifaceted subtleties of targeted protein degradation to explore and ultimately control protein activity in cancer.
Behnam Nabet
Dr. Behnam Nabet
Katherine Loker Pinard Fellow
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute


Behnam Nabet, Ph.D. is the Katherine Loker Pinard Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Nathanael Gray at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Nabet received his Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Northwestern University and B.A. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. In his postdoctoral research, Dr. Nabet developed a generalizable technology platform known as the dTAG system to rapidly degrade any target protein of interest. The dTAG system pairs potent small molecule degraders and extensible tagging strategies to achieve selective degradation of divergent proteins. This technology facilitates biological exploration and drug target validation in cells and animal models. Dr. Nabet is currently applying the dTAG platform to investigate pancreatic cancer dependencies and has been sharing the technology with the global scientific community in an open-source manner. Dr. Nabet is supported by an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship and is a recipient of the Claudia Adams Barr Program for Innovative Cancer Research award.
Fleur Ferguson

Dr. Fleur Ferguson
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute


Fleur Ferguson is a postdoctoral fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Her research focuses on the development of chemical tools for interrogating the biological function and therapeutic potential of disease targets in cancer and neurodegeneration. Fleur received her M.Sc in chemistry from Imperial College London, and her Ph.D in chemistry from the University of Cambridge.
Nicole Trainor
Dr. Nicole Trainor
Project Lead Scientist for PROTAC discovery collaboration
University of Dundee and Boehringer Ingelheim


Nicole Trainor is a Project Lead Scientist working for the PROTAC drug discovery collaboration between Alessio Ciulli’s lab at the University of Dundee and Boehringer Ingelheim, Vienna. She joined the collaboration in 2017 shortly after its launch, to work in a dual role as medicinal chemist and proteomics scientist. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry at Imperial College, where she also studied for her undergraduate degree.

Scott Edmondson

Dr. Scott Edmondson
Director and Head of Oncology Chemistry
AstraZeneca


Scott D. Edmondson received his Bachelor degree in chemistry from Cornell University in 1991. He earned his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1996 wth Prof. Leo Paquette and then moved to Columbia University for an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Samuel Danishefsky. He joined the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at Merck in Rahway, New Jersey in 1998. At Merck, Dr. Edmondson worked on projects in the early discovery space (target validation, lead identification) through late stage discovery and beyond. He contributed to a broad range of therapeutic areas including obesity, diabetes, urology, cardiovascular diseases, and virology. Scott is a co-inventor of sitagliptin (JanuviaTM) used to treat type 2 diabetes and he led the β3-adrenergic receptor agonist program through the discovery and early development of vibegron (BeovaTM) for the treatment of overactive bladder.

In 2016, Dr. Edmondson joined AstraZeneca and is currently the Director and Head of Oncology Chemistry in Boston, Massachussetts. He leads a team of ~40 internal chemists who work on drug discovery programs in oncology from target validation through candidate discovery. Scott also co-leads the Global Oncology PROTACs effort to help establish and grow this promising new modality at AstraZeneca. Outside of work, Scott is active in the external scientific community through Boston symposia committees, book chapter writing/editing, and a variety of chemistry recruiting efforts. Over the course of his career, Scott has authored/co-authored more than 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and over 55 patents/patent applications.
Hannah Maple
Dr. Hannah Maple
Innovation Manager
Bio-Techne


Hannah Maple, Ph.D. is the Innovation Manager for Tocris, a Bio-Techne brand. In this role she leads a team responsible for identifying, developing and commercializing innovative new tools and technologies for Life Sciences research. Prior to joining Tocris, Hannah was the manager of the MRC-funded Metabolomics NMR Facility at Bristol University. She has also worked for the pharmaceutical company, UCB, where she was a Senior Scientist developing and implementing new biophysical techniques for studying protein structure, interactions and function. Hannah received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Bristol.