Bioorthogonal Chemistry in Biology and Medicine

Speakers

Organizers

Howard C. Hang, PhD

The Rockefeller University

Dr Hang received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1998 with Prof. Joseph Konopelski and his PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 with Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi. He was a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research with Prof. Hidde Ploegh. He joined Rockefeller in 2007 as assistant professor and head of laboratory and was appointed associate professor in 2013.

Jennifer S. Henry PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

T. Eric Ballard, Jr, PhD

Pfizer Worldwide Research and Development

Dr. Eric Ballard is a Principal Scientist in the Biotransformation group in Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics and Metabolism at Pfizer. In his current role, Eric investigates the clearance mechanisms and metabolism of small molecules in support of early and late stage research and development. Prior to his current position, Eric was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Worldwide Medicinal Chemistry Group at Pfizer where he investigated the design and synthesis of clickable photoaffinity-based small molecule probes and their application to mechanism-of-action studies in neurologic and psychiatric disorders. Preceding his time at Pfizer, Eric was a Postdoctoral Associate in Prof. Timothy MacDonald's lab at the University of Virginia where he worked on the synthesis of small molecule inhibitors of the PFOR enzyme present in anaerobic pathogenic bacteria. Eric received his PhD in Organic Chemistry in 2008 from North Carolina State University under the direction of Prof. Christian Melander. He has coauthored numerous publications on organic synthesis, bioorganic chemistry, chemical biology and metabolism.

Joseph M. Fox, PhD

University of Delaware

Joseph M. Fox is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware.

Fox received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, where he conducted undergraduate research as a Pfizer fellow with Maitland Jones Jr. He completed graduate studies under Thomas Katz at Columbia University, where he developed a combined interest in materials science and the synthesis of challenging targets. He studied organometallic chemistry with Stephen Buchwald at MIT as an NIH postdoctoral fellow, where he worked on Pd-catalyzed ketone arylation and devised a synthesis of phosphine ligands that is now used commercially.

In 2001, Fox joined the faculty at UD, and he has built a multidisciplinary program that centers on the development of new types of chemical reactions. His group has developed new syntheses and transformations of chiral cyclopropenes and trans-cycloalkenes, and a new type of bioorthogonal reaction that allows for extremely rapid conjugation to biological macromolecules. Applications of this work include synthesis of naturally occurring and designed molecules with biological function, and in the use of design concepts in organic synthesis for applications in biology, nuclear medicine, imaging, therapy and materials science. He was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2011. His awards include the NSF Career Award and the University of Delaware Outstanding Doctoral Student Advising and Mentoring Award.

Howard C. Hang, PhD

The Rockefeller University

Dr Hang received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1998 with Prof. Joseph Konopelski and his PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 with Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi. He was a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research with Prof. Hidde Ploegh. He joined Rockefeller in 2007 as assistant professor and head of laboratory and was appointed associate professor in 2013.

Minkui Luo, PhD

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Luo is an Assistant Professor and Assistant Member in the program of Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Luo received PhD from Princeton University with the major in bioorganic and chemical biology, and then conducted his postdoctoral training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine with the focus on developing tight-binding transition-state inhibitors. Dr. Luo accumulated multiple-year experiences to develop chemical tools to define, perturb and manipulate essential functions of enzymes. Dr. Luo has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers in the field of chemistry and chemical biology in well-recognized peer-reviewed journals. He has also received many awards and honors, such as the Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Alfred W. Bressler Scholar, and the V Scholar Award for Cancer Research.

Lisa Shah

SUNY Stony Brook

Lisa Shah received her BS in Chemistry from New York University in 2011 and is currently a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University under the advisement of Dr. Isaac Carrico. She is a fellow of both the NIH-funded Chemical Biology Training Program and the US Department of State/New York Academy of Science NeXXt Scholars Program. Her research interests broadly and briefly include developing bioorthogonal chemical tools to probe biology, elucidating bacterial kinase signal transduction pathways, and understanding the role of PTMs in cancer cell biology.