ブレイクアウトディスカッション

Breakout Discussions are informal, moderated discussions, allowing participants to exchange ideas and experiences and develop future collaborations around a focused topic. Each discussion will be led by a facilitator, or facilitators, who keeps the discussion on track and the group engaged. To get the most out of this format, please come prepared to share examples from your work, be a part of a collective, problem-solving session, and participate in active idea sharing.

All Breakouts will be offered IN-PERSON ONLY. Note that you can track-hop to a breakout discussion taking place on a concurrent conference track.

PART A CONFERENCES

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2025 | 2:50 PM

Degraders & Molecular Glues - Part 1
Discovery and Optimization of Molecular Glues
Yong Cang, PhD, Professor, ShanghaiTech University; Co-Founder & CSO, Degron Therapeutics
Bradley DeMarco, PhD, Associate Director, Biochemistry & Biophysics, Monte Rosa Therapeutics
Jin Wang, PhD, Director, Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Baylor College of Medicine

Strategies For Developing Next-Generation Degraders
Will Proctor, PhD, Senior Director & Toxicology Project Specialist, GSK
Nicki Thompson, PhD, CEO, TRIMTECH Therapeutics Ltd.
Justin Wolfe, PhD, Co-Founder & CSO, Transcera

Emerging Drug Targets: Identification & Validation
Leveraging Induced Proximity and Chemoproteomics to Uncover Viable Drug Targets
Steve Gygi, PhD, Professor, Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School

Innovative Approaches, Assays and Screening Platforms for Target ID and Validation
Ann Boija, PhD, Senior Vice President, Head of Research, Dewpoint Therapeutics
Krzysztof Brzozka, PhD, CSO, Ryvu Therapeutics
Fabien Vincent, PhD, Consultant; formerly Pharmacology Lab Head, Pfizer Inc.

Small Molecules for Cancer Targets
Covalent Approaches for Drug Discovery
Sherry Ke Li, PhD, Principal Scientist, Biochemical & Cellular Pharmacology, Genentech, Inc.

• How to prioritize targets for covalent drug discovery
• Assessing if a covalent ligand or fragment for a novel target can be progressed to a drug (e.g., sufficient pocket, supportive biology) 
• Role of SPR and other biophysical tools for covalent drug discovery 
• Targeting amino acids beyond cysteine

Antibodies Against Membrane Protein Targets
Antibody Discovery Against GPCRs: Challenges and Lessons Learned
André A. R. Teixeira, PhD, Senior Director, Antibody Platform, Institution for Protein Innovation

• Antigen Design and Presentation: What strategies have been most successful for expressing and stabilizing GPCRs in formats compatible with antibody discovery (e.g., VLPs, SMALPs, nanodiscs)?
• Screening and Selection Challenges: How do traditional display and immunization platforms perform when targeting GPCRs? What innovations have helped enrich for conformation-specific or functional antibodies?
• Epitope Accessibility and Functional Screening: How do we ensure antibodies recognize native, cell-surface GPCR conformations? What assays (e.g., functional blocking, signaling modulation) are critical for triaging hits?
• Lessons from Success Stories: What are key takeaways from programs that successfully advanced anti-GPCR antibodies into clinical development? What common pitfalls can be avoided?
• Platform Readiness and Collaboration: What capabilities are needed in-house to take on GPCR targets, and where have partnerships (e.g., structural biology, pharmacology) been critical to success?

RNA & DNA Targeting Small Molecule Drugs
Overcoming Challenges Associated with Targeting RNA & DNA as Viable Drug Targets
Emily Garcia Sega, PhD, Senior Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry, Arrakis Therapeutics
Elisabetta Morini, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital
Nikolai Naryshkin, PhD, CSO, Ribonaut Therapeutics

AI/ML-Enabled Drug Discovery - Part 1
Generative AI for Hit Finding and Lead Optimization
Anthony Bradley, D.Phil, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool
Woody Sherman, PhD, CIO, Psivant Therapeutics

How Successful are AI/ML Approaches in Finding Good Drug Targets?
Praveen Anand, PhD, Data & Analytics Lead, Data Science and Analytics, UCB Pharma
Tudor Oprea, MD, PhD, CEO, Expert Systems, Inc.
Douglas Selinger, PhD, CEO & Founder, Plex Research Inc.

Targeting MASH & Obesity
To Be Announced

In-Person Only BREAKOUT DISCUSSION:

PART B CONFERENCES

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 | 10:05 AM

Degraders & Molecular Glues - Part 2
Pursuing Novel Degradation Modalities, E3 Ligases for Challenging Drug Targets
Mikolaj Slabicki, PhD, Assistant Professor, MGH/Broad Institute
Charles Wartchow, PhD, Associate Director, Discovery Sciences, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Lead Generation Strategies
Hit Validation Strategies
Gottfried Schroeder, PhD, Associate Principal Scientist, Quantitative Biosciences, Merck & Co., Inc.

• Eliminating false positives 
• Data analysis formats 
• Binding methods: How important is it? 
• Favorite biophysical tools (SPR, NMR, Mass Spec?)

Emerging Cancer Targets for Multispecifics, ADCs, and Biologics
Mechanisms of Resistance to Advanced Biologics
Miroslaw Janowski, MD, Tenured Professor, Diagnostic Radiology, University of Maryland Baltimore

• Uniqueness of tumor environments and a hunger for drugs to overcome it.
• Lessons learned from imaging of drug delivery and tumor microenvironment
• Diversity of blood-cancers barriers
• Intracellular vs extracellular mechanisms of resistance
• Monotherapy vs. combined therapy

GPCR-Based Drug Discovery
Biophysical Tools for GPCR-based Drug Discovery
Kris A. Borzilleri, Principal Scientist, Structural Biology & Molecular Sciences, Pfizer Global R&D, Groton Labs

• Emerging solubilization techniques: peptidiscs, nanodiscs, SMALPs and more
• Construct design challenges: what about the G protein in agonist-only binding assays?
• Experimental design for new GPCR Hit ID technologies (e.g. DEL and SPR)

Targeting Transcription Factors & Regulators
Pursuing Transcription Factors and Regulators as Viable Drug Targets
Yunji Davenport, PhD, Director, Drug Discovery, Foghorn Therapeutics
Gaelle Mercenne, PhD, Head, Biology, Talus Bio
Asad Taherbhoy, PhD, Director, Drug Discovery, Foghorn Therapeutics

• Modalities/approaches being pursued at present - e.g. Inhibitors, degraders, molecular glues, PPI disruption 
• Will covalency play a larger role going forward, especially for intrinsically disordered transcription factors
• What screening approaches are proving to be the most successful, biochemical vs. cell based

AI/ML-Enabled Drug Discovery - Part 2
How to Successfully Integrate and Apply AI/ML in Drug Development?
Joeri Nicolaes, PhD, Computer Scientist & DT Lead, AI Solutions & Multimodal AI, UCB Pharma

Impact of AI-driven Drug Design, Screening and Optimization
Victor Guallar, PhD, Professor, Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Nostrum Biodiscovery