Previous Webinar

Ingrid Wertz is the executive director of Protein Homeostasis Center of Excellence at BMS. She and her team are responsible for developing protein degrader medicines for patients in need by harnessing degradation systems naturally present within the human body. Their aim is to specifically target and eliminate disease-relevant proteins that have been largely undruggable. Prior to joining Bristol Myers Squibb, Ingrid was a principal scientist in the departments of Discovery Oncology and Early Discovery Biochemistry at Genentech, where she led the company’s degrader platform aimed at co-opting ubiquitin system enzymes for therapeutic benefit.

Sara Buhrlage is heading a cancer chemical biology lab at the DFCI. Her lab has established an integrated DUB-focused platform comprised of DUB-targeted libraries with novel scaffolds and chemotypes and a suite of established and novel biochemical and chemoproteomic assays that has accelerated development of selective probes and annotation of function and translational potential for multiple DUBs. The group is now building on these successes to generate a deep bench of inhibitor focused projects as well as expanding the platform through innovation in DUB ligand mechanisms of action and DUB-focused technologies. 

Anthony Varca just graduated from the Harvard Chemical Biology PhD program, where he worked in the Buhrlage lab. His research has focused on the design and implementation of a high-throughput screen and orthogonal validation assays towards the identification of selective small molecule DUB inhibitors. Subsequent work has focused on the optimization of screening hits into small molecule probe compounds for studying DUBs' function and role in disease.