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Claire M. Steppan, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow in Pfizer’s Primary Pharmacology group within Discovery Sciences and has played an integral role in establishing Pfizer’s enabling SLC platform. Claire is an accomplished pharmacologist with scientific leadership spanning from early discovery through clinical development in diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, pain, gout, peripheral artery disease, depression and COVID-19. Within Pfizer, she has been the research project leader for multi-disciplinary teams that produced two FIH starts and one Phase 2 start for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes. She has a long-standing interest in SLC transporters beginning with Pfizer’s SGLT2 inhibitor, ertugliflozin.

Prof. Dr. Giulio Superti-Furga is the Scientific Director of CeMM and Professor for Medical Systems Biology at the Center for Physiology and Pharmacology (Medical University of Vienna). He has >25 years of experience in the use of chemical biology and omics techniques to understand drug action. He co-founded the biotech companies Cellzome, Haplogen, Allcyte(now Exscientia),Proxygen and Solgate. He was responsible for several large-scale projects such as genome-wide characterization of the yeast protein complexes, mapping of the entire NF-κB pathway, the viral interactome, organization of the human lipidome and global genetic interaction map of Solute Carrier transporters (SLCs).

David Sauer is a biophysicist focusing on the structure and function of membrane channels and transporters. As group leader at the University of Oxford since 2021, he has been studying the structure and function of membrane proteins for 16 years. David completed his graduate degree studying potassium channel structure and ion selectivity at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. This was followed by postdoctoral training at New York University School of Medicine. There he described the structure, transport mechanism, and chemical inhibition of SLC13/DASS membrane transporters.

David Hepworth, Ph.D. is VP of Medicinal Chemistry at Pfizer’s Cambridge MA site responsible for Inflammation and Immunology, Rare Diseases and Chemical Biology. Previously he has worked across a number of other disease areas and Pfizer sites. He has a long-standing interest in membrane proteins and SLC transporters in particular, having worked in the area since his first Pfizer project in 1999 focusing on the serotonin transporter, through the initiation of Pfizer’s SGLT2 program for diabetes treatment. David has co-led, together with Dr Claire Steppan, a Pfizer team building research capabilities in SLC transporters which led to Pfizer taking a leading role in the RESOLUTE consortium.