Ligand Binding

Gerhard Mueller is Senior Vice President at Mercachem (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), where he is in charge of all drug discovery projects. Before joining Mercachem, he held several managerial research positions within the Biotech industry (CSO of Axxima Pharmaceuticals AG, Vice President Drug Discovery at GPC Biotech AG), as well as in the pharmaceutical industry (Section Head Chemistry at Organon, Research Scientist at Bayer AG and at Glaxo). He is an expert in structure-based design, utilizing protein crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, and direct and indirect molecular modelling technologies. His current focus is on target-family centric medicinal chemistry approaches for Lead Finding and Optimization, applied to inhibitor design against kinases and epigenetic targets. He has authored more than 75 scientific publications and many patent applications from his academic and industrial research.

Beat Ernst heads the Institute of Molecular Pharmacy at the University of Basel (Switzerland). Prior to his academic appointment, he was in charge of the carbohydrate section of Ciba-Geigy and later the selectin project at Novartis. His research interests are focused on carbohydrate-protein interactions. In a joint project with the biotechnology company GlycoMimetics he developed the glycomimetic GMI-1070, a selectin antagonist that recently successfully finished phase II clinical trials for the treatment of the sickle cell disease. He has authored more than 170 scientific publications, patent applications and books from his academic and industrial research.