Previous Webinar

Matt Hall joined NCATS in 2015 as a biology group leader in the NCATS Chemical Genomics Center focusing on biochemical and cell-based assays for automated, small molecule, high-throughput screening. Current efforts are identifying therapeutic avenues for rare and drug-resistant cancers, devising adjuvant strategies for platinum-based chemotherapies and developing assays for understanding blood plasma drug metabolism. His group also develop assays for small-molecule target engagement, explore the role of glutathione peroxidase in cancer, and examine drug interactions with the blood-brain barrier.

Alison Axtman is a synthetic medicinal chemist with more than 10 years of research experience working at the interface of chemistry and biology. Her research has focused on the synthesis of small molecules that selectively modulate proteins implicated in disease-propagating pathways. She is currently an assistant professor in the Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry Department in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. At the SGC-UNC, she leads the design of novel chemical probes for understudied protein kinases that is openly shared with collaborators to facilitate target discovery in human disease-relevant assays.

Associate Professor of Biological Engineering

Member, MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine

Institute Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

KI Research Areas of Focus:
Personalized Medicine

Damian Young is an Assistant Director for the Center for Drug Discovery at Baylor College of Medicine. He is also a faculty member within the Departments of Pharmacology and Pathology and Immunology. His research focuses on the development of chemical pathways leading to molecules that can be used to probe fundamental and disease-associated biology. His lab is pioneering new chemical and biophysical methodologies related to fragment-based drug discovery to be deployed against challenging targets in cancer.

Jordan Meier is Senior Investigator and Head of the Epigenetics and Metabolism Section within the Chemical Biology Laboratory in the Center of Cancer Research of the NCI. His work focuses on the development of chemical approaches to study epigenetic signaling and its relationship to cellular metabolism. The goal of his studies is to better elucidate the underlying logic linking gene expression and metabolism, and apply this knowledge towards new approaches to cancer therapy, diagnosis, and chemoprevention.

Michelle Arkin is co-Director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center, Professor, and incoming department chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF. Her lab develops innovative approaches to screen for chemical tools and drug leads, using biophysical approaches like fragment-based drug discovery and biological approaches including high-content imaging. The lab’s goals are to demonstrate ‘druggability’ of new target classes for chemical biology and drug discovery. Areas of interest include protein-protein interactions, allosteric and scaffolding sites in enzymes, cancer and neurodegeneration.