Anti-Inflammatory Drug Discovery

Professor Laufer has held the chair for Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Tubingen since 1999. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Regensburg (1989) and obtained his Venia Legendi (habilitation) in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Mainz (1997). From 1990-99 he held senior research and executive positions in pharmaceutical industry. His research interests cover major aspects of anti-inflammatory drug discovery and development, including design, synthesis, biological screening, metabolism, and bioanalytics. The molecular targets that have been the focus of research in his laboratory are the key enzymes of the arachidonate cascade and protein kinases. Two drug candidates from his lab have reached clinical development stages (ML3000-Licofelone, a COX/LOX Inhibitor and CSB3595, a p38 MAPK/PDE4 inhibitor). Professor Laufer has authored 230 publications and is the inventor of 36 patent families. Jeremy I. Levin has been a Director of Medicinal Chemistry for Boehringer-Ingelheim in Ridgefield, Connecticut, since 2010. He received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in 1978 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry with Professor Steven Weinreb at the Pennsylvania State University in 1983. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California at Irvine with Professor Larry Overman, he spent 25 years in the pharmaceutical industry at American Cyanamid (Lederle laboratories) and Wyeth Research. Dr. Levin has worked in a variety of therapeutic areas including CNS, inflammation and immunology, and oncology. He is the author/co-author of more than 75 papers and an inventor on more than 60 U. S. Patents.