Venomics: Drug Discovery from Nature's Deadliest

Organizers

Mandë Holford, PhD

Hunter College, CUNY; American Museum of Natural History
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Mandë Holford is as an assistant professor of chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center with a scientific appointment at the American Museum of Natural History. Her dual appointment reflects her interdisciplinary research, which combines chemistry and biology to discover, characterize, and deliver novel neuropeptides from venomous marine snails (cone snails, terebrids, and turrids) as tools for manipulating cell signaling in the nervous system. She has received funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support her independent research. Holford received her PhD in synthetic protein chemistry from The Rockefeller University. She was recently award the prestigious Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award and, in 2011, received an NSF CAREER Award.

Steven Gross, PhD

Weill Cornell Medical College
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Steven Gross is a professor of pharmacology, director of the Mass Spectrometry Core Facility, and director of advanced training in pharmacology at the Weill Cornell Medical College. Gross received an award from the American Chemical Society for Achievements in Mass Spectrometry in 2011. His primary research interest is in cell–cell communication, with a focus on nitric oxide (NO) and reactive molecules as mediators of cell signaling. In the 1980s, Gross and colleagues made the initial identification of L-arginine as the precursor of NO in blood vessels. They were also first to establish that NOS inhibition elevates blood pressure in animals, demonstrating that NO plays a physiological role in controlling blood pressure and vascular tone. Research efforts have since been directed toward understanding NO synthesis in cells. His studies led to core technologies for the creation of ArgiNOx Inc., a biotech start-up that seeks to develop novel NO-based drugs. Gross's research is supported in part by a MERIT Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH. He is a founder and board director of the Nitric Oxide Society and chairs the Steering Committee of the Biochemical Pharmacology Discussion Group (BPDG) at the Academy. Gross received his PhD in biomedical science from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Jennifer Henry is the director of Life Sciences at the New York Academy of Sciences. Henry joined the Academy in 2009, before which she was a publishing manager in the Academic Journals division at Nature Publishing Group. She also has eight years of direct editorial experience as editor of Functional Plant Biology for CSIRO Publishing in Australia. She received her PhD in plant molecular biology from the University of Melbourne, specializing in the genetic engineering of transgenic crops. As director of Life Sciences, she is responsible for developing scientific symposia across a range of life sciences, including biochemical pharmacology, neuroscience, systems biology, genome integrity, infectious diseases and microbiology. She also generates alliances with organizations interested in developing programmatic content.

Keynote Speaker

Baldomero M. Olivera, PhD

University of Utah
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Baldomero ("Toto") Olivera holds a PhD in the biophysical chemistry of DNA from California Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral work in biochemistry at Stanford University. He held a faculty position at the University of the Philippines Medical School before moving to the University of Utah, where he is a distinguished professor of biology. His early research included the discovery and biochemical characterization of E. coli DNA ligase, which made the recombinant DNA revolution in biology possible. Olivera studies biologically active peptides found in the venoms of predatory cone snails, which include many peptide neurotoxins ("conopeptides"). Conus venom components are used to investigate the molecular components of nervous systems, particularly ion channels. The cone snail project has led to research into topics from protein folding and post-translational modification to gene organization and speciation. Several peptides discovered in Olivera's lab have been developed as therapeutic drugs. Three have reached human clinical trials and one (Prialt) has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of intractable pain. Additional applications of these compounds as therapeutics for heart attack, stroke, epilepsy, and other neuropathologies are being explored.

Speakers

Anirban Banerjee, PhD

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH
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Anirban Banerjee holds an MSc in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology. As a PhD student in Dr. Greg Verdine's lab at Harvard University, he combined tools and techniques from synthetic oligonucleotide chemistry, biochemistry, and crystallography to study how a particular class of DNA repair proteins locate rare sites of damaged bases in DNA and discriminate between undamaged and damaged DNA. In his postdoctoral studies in the lab of Dr. Rod MacKinnon at The Rockefeller University, he focused on voltage-dependent K+ channels (Kv channels), including the mechanism by which small peptide toxins from the venom of poisonous animals target these ion channels. In 2012 he became an Earl Stadtman Investigator in the Cell Biology and Metabolism Program at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development, NIH. He is the recipient of the ACS Nobel Laureate Signature Award in graduate education, a postdoctoral fellowship from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, and the NIH Director's Challenge Award.

Carole A. Bewley, PhD

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIH
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Carole A. Bewley received her PhD from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine natural products chemistry/oceanography and completed postdoctoral research in the Laboratory of Chemical Physics at the NIH. She joined the faculty of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIH, where she is a senior investigator and chief of the Natural Products Chemistry Section and deputy chief of the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry. She leads a multidisciplinary research program that focuses on discovery and structural studies of natural products and protein inhibitors that have therapeutic potential in antibiotics and viral entry inhibitors. She has received the NIH Director's Award and the Paul Dowd Lectureship and is an inventor on patents for discoveries in anti-infectives.

Pierre Escoubas, PhD

VenomeTech
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Pierre Escoubas is president and CEO of VenomeTech, a biotechnology startup company in the Sophia-Antipolis French research cluster. Escoubas obtained his PhD in chemical entomology at the University Pierre and Marie Curie, France, and worked as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Georgia before moving to Japan as a research associate for the Japan Research and Development Corporation. He later joined the Suntory Institute for Bioorganic Research (SUNBOR), Japan, to work on peptide toxins from animal venoms, and then returned to France to join Prof. M. Lazdunski at the CNRS Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology and as an associate professor at the University of Paris and the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. He founded VenomeTech in 2009 and has since been leading the company toward the development of innovative drugs from animal venom peptides. Escoubas is leading the FP7 European project VENOMICS, a large-scale endeavor to develop novel drugs from animal venom peptides. His research interests include the discovery of novel peptide toxins from venomous animals, biological mass spectrometry, peptide engineering and folding, ion channel molecular pharmacology, and the development of novel peptide therapeutics.

Bryan Fry, PhD

The University of Queensland, Australia
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Bryan G. Fry holds a PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia, where he is now an associate professor. He has published widely on venomous animals including cephalopods, centipedes, jellyfish, reptiles, scorpions, spiders, slow lorises, and even vampire bats. His fieldwork has taken him to all the continents, working on projects including collecting venomous octopuses in Antarctica. His discoveries include the finding that the iconic Komodo Dragon is venomous. His research has led to the discovery of compounds that are useful as medicines, and he has, for example, patented taipan snake venom peptides for use in treating congestive heart failure.

Inés Ibañez-Tallon, PhD

The Rockefeller University
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Inés Ibañez-Tallon is a visiting associate professor at The Rockefeller University and group leader at the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine, Germany. She studied biology at the University of Barcelona, Spain, obtained her PhD in genetic sciences from the University of Milan, Italy, and completed postdoctoral studies at The Rockefeller University.

Mark E. Siddall, PhD

American Museum of Natural History
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Mark E. Siddall is curator of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. His research has focused on the evolutionary biology of parasites from single-celled microbes to leeches. Siddall is now researching Darwinian selection and the diversity of hemotoxic venom proteins of leeches such as Tyranobdella rex (T. rex), recently described from the Amazon. Siddall has led field expeditions for the American Museum of Natural History. He is a professor in the museum's Richard Gilder Graduate School and is a principal investigator in its Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. In addition to serving as vice president of the American Society of Parasitologists, Siddall is also the curator of the museum's Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies exhibition and co-curator of the Irma and Paul Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life and the Power of Poison exhibition. He received his PhD in zoology from the University of Toronto, Canada.

Beatrix Ueberheide, PhD

NYU Langone Medical Center
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Beatrix Ueberheide joined the faculty of New York University as an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and as director of the Proteomics Core. She has experience in biological mass spectrometry, especially method development, mapping of post-translational modifications, de novo sequencing, and "Bottom Up" and "Top Down" strategies, as well as comprehensive protein characterization in complex mixtures. Ueberheide contributed to studies ranging from analyzing chromatin to characterizing venoms and sequencing complex antibody mixtures. She received her PhD in chemistry at the University of Virginia in the lab of Dr. Donald Hunt, where she focused on histone post-translational modifications. She completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Brian Chait at The Rockefeller University, where she developed de novo sequencing strategies for analysis of venom components and established techniques to study antibodies isolated from HIV-infected long-term non-progressors. She is currently working to develop advanced mass-spectrometric techniques for the characterization, de novo sequencing, and quantitation of proteins and their post-translational modifications.

Panelists

Yvonne M. Angell, PhD

Ipsen

Yvonne M. Angell is director of chemistry at Ipsen. She earned a PhD in medicinal chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Minnesota. Angell has 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including design of novel, constrained peptide libraries to inhibit protein–protein interactions at Eli Lilly and Co.; design and development of bead-based binding assays to identify new hits aimed at inhibiting protein–protein interactions at Genetics Institute (now Pfizer); and hit-to-lead optimization on several peptide therapeutic projects as a senior scientist at Affymax. Her current work at Ipsen is focused on discovery, design, and engineering of novel, potent, selective lead-peptide and peptide chimeric compounds for oncology and endocrinology targets. She has led several cross-functional project teams from early discovery through preclinical development.

Les P. Miranda, PhD

Amgen

Les P. Miranda is director of research in therapeutic discovery at Amgen Inc. He obtained his PhD in synthetic peptide and protein chemistry from the University of Queensland, Australia. Miranda held a research position at the Carlsberg Laboratory, Denmark, and then served as an associate director at Gryphon Therapeutics, where he contributed to the development of methods for the total chemical synthesis and medicinal optimization of protein therapeutics. At Amgen, he is responsible for peptide and related hybrid discovery, and he has supported preclinical and early development programs. Miranda has led several cross-functional teams through drug discovery and development.

Hazel H. Szeto, MD, PhD

Stealth Peptides Inc.

Hazel H. Szeto is a professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the Research Program in Mitochondrial Therapeutics. Szeto has extensive expertise in peptide-based drug design, pharmacokinetics, and preclinical drug development. She has developed several highly potent and selective opioid peptide analogs that are metabolically stable and can readily cross the blood–brain barrier. In 2004, Szeto discovered that certain cell-permeable aromatic-cationic tetrapeptides selectively target and concentrate in the inner mitochondrial membrane. She has evaluated their efficacy in protecting and restoring mitochondrial bioenergetics in preclinical models of age-associated complex diseases, including cardiorenal diseases, metabolic diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, skeletal muscle weakness, and chronic pain. She founded Stealth Peptides International to take these "first-in-class" cardiolipin therapeutics from bench to bedside. The first drug candidate (Bendavia) is in phase II clinical trials for acute cardiorenal ischemic injury and heart failure. Szeto is a full-time faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College and a scientific consultant for Stealth Peptides. She received her MD and PhD in pharmacology from Cornell University Medical College.

Nicholette Zeliadt

Nicholette Zeliadt writes about science for scientists and non-scientists alike. She has a background in biochemistry and nutrition, and a PhD in environmental health sciences from the University of Minnesota. In pursuit of science, she has traveled by ship to the South Pacific Gyre, traversed the Willamette Valley by bike, and encountered 12 of the planet's 13 climatic zones. She has written for Scientific American, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, BioTechniques, and About.com.