Speakers
Prof. Dr. Danijel Kikelj
Danijel Kikelj is Professor Emeritus of medicinal chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He graduated in pharmacy from the University of Ljubljana in 1978, where he also earned a master of science degree in 1983. He obtained his doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) in heterocyclic pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1988 under the mentorship of Professor Richard Neidlein.
From 1991 to 1992, he served as a C-3 professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Heidelberg. From 2000 until his retirement in 2022, he was a full professor of medicinal chemistry and head of the research programme in Medicinal Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Ljubljana. The main areas of his research have been medicinal chemistry, peptidomimetics, muramyl dipeptide-based immunomodulatory compounds, structure-based design of dual antithrombotic compounds, inhibitors of Mur enzymes involved in peptidoglycan biosynthesis, pharmaceutical leads based on marine bioactive compounds, and, most recently, the discovery of inhibitors of bacterial topoisomerases with activity against Gram-negative bacteria.
He was one of the founders of the Paul Ehrlich MedChem Euro-PhD Network, organized the 2nd Network meeting at the University of Ljubljana in 2012, and served as the Network’s coordinator from 2012 to 2015.
Dr. Ed J. Griffen
Ed J. Griffen earned his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from Imperial College London, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He subsequently joined AstraZeneca as a medicinal chemist, where he progressed to the role of Principal Scientist. In 2012, he co-founded MedChemica Ltd. He is an inventor on 17 patents and has authored more than 30 scientific articles as well as a textbook. He has contributed to four drug discovery projects that have progressed to clinical development, including capivasertib. In March 2020, he joined the COVID Moonshot initiative as Design Team Leader, contributing to the development of two SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors that advanced to pre-clinical development.
Since 2022, he has been Head of Lead Optimisation at the ASAP Pandemic Preparedness U19 AViDD Centre, where he is currently working on treatments for flaviviral infections, including dengue and Zika viruses. He is also a co-Principal Investigator in the OpenBind Consortium, which aims to build large-scale datasets for the prediction of binding affinity
More speakers will be announced soon!