RNA as a Drug Target

John Schneekloth received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in 2001 where he worked with Prof. Gordon Gribble. He then moved to Yale University and obtained a Ph.D. from the chemistry department with Prof. Craig Crews in 2006. As a graduate student he studied natural product total synthesis and developed the first cell-permeable PROTAC molecules. He then pursued an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Erik Sorensen at Princeton University where he worked on the development of a new multicomponent reaction and the application of this reaction to the synthesis of analgesic natural products. He returned to Yale in 2009 where he worked as a medicinal chemist at the Yale Small Molecule Discovery Center. In 2011, Dr. Schneekloth joined NCI where his research involves using synthetic chemistry and high throughput chemical biology approaches to develop chemical probes of RNA, with a particular emphasis on targeting RNA with druglike small molecules.

Martin Pettersson is a medicinal chemistry / drug discovery leader with 18+ years of industrial experience. He received his undergraduate degree from Indiana University in 1998, working with David R. Williams. After four years working for Pfizer, he then joined the University of Texas at Austin for a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Stephen F. Martin. He continued to work for Pfizer, where he delivered multiple compounds into clinical development. He co-led Pfizer's COVID-19 oral protease inhibitor program from project inception until August 2020, during which time the clinical candidate PF-07321332 (Paxlovid) was designed and synthesized. In 2020, he became senior director Neuroscience/Pain at Grünenthal Group, where he is also a member of the Research Board. His publication record includes more than 70 publications, patents/patent applications, and presentations.