Managing the Drug Discovery Process

Susan M. Miller has been Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the School of Pharmacy at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) for over 30 years. Prior to UCSF, she held positions as an Assistant Professor and Lecturer of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research focus and expertise lies in the areas of chemical biology and enzymology. Her team uses a variety of biochemical and biophysical tools to investigate protein structure/function questions spanning the range of elucidating novel aspects of catalysis in individual enzymes, to understanding how mutations influence flux through pathways of interacting proteins, to engineering novel microbial compounds using enzymes from ribosomally-synthesized peptide precursor pathways. She has mentored over 40 students, postdocs and staff researchers who currently hold positions in academia, biotech/pharma, the FDA, data science, patent law and other entrepreneurial organizations. She has co-authored and co-edited 5 books and published ~50 peer-reviewed papers. She has served as reviewer for grants at NIH, NSF, DOE and for numerous scientific journals, and is currently a member of the Editorial Review Board at the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Recently, Dr. Miller has served a leading role in the transformative design of the UCSF professional PharmD curriculum. She has co-directed the Therapeutic Sciences portion of the Foundations course and has served as co-Director developing and implementing a novel trio of inquiry elements in the new curriculum. Susan received her B.S. with high honors in Chemistry from the University of Missouri Columbia and her Ph.D. in chemistry with Professor Judith Klinman at the University of California Berkeley.Walter Moos has been an adjunct Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) since 1992. In parallel, he has been Managing Director of Pandect Bioventures, which he co-founded in 2018. At ShangPharma Innovation, starting in 2016 as an advisor, then as CEO, and most recently as emeritus Chairman, he led development of the group's innovation ecosystem. He is past President of Biosciences at the independent nonprofit Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), where he spent more than a decade, until 2016. Moos also managed corporate IT Services at SRI. Earlier he was Chairman/CEO of MitoKor (Micrologics/Migenix) and a VP at Chiron (Novartis) and at Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis (Pfizer). He and his teams have made significant contributions to all R&D phases from early-stage research on chemical and biological therapeutics and diagnostics to marketed pharmaceutical products. They have done this with the support of big pharma, foundations, government grants and contracts, and venture capital. Moos has served on more than 20 business and scientific boards, public and private, non-profit and for-profit, including Alnis, Amunix (Sanofi), Anterion, Aprinoia, Axiom (Sequenom), the Biotechnology Industry (Innovation) Organization (BIO), Circle, the Critical Path Institute, Global Blood (Pfizer), Keystone Symposia, Mimotopes (Fisher/Thermo), MitoKor (Micrologics/Migenix), Oncologic (Aduro/Chinook), Onyx (Amgen), Rigel, ShangPharma Innovation, Valitor, and the Virginia University Research Partnership. He has advised companies on several continents and served as a committee member for academic, government, and investor groups, including the US National Academy of Sciences. He has co-founded several scientific journals, co-authored or edited multiple books, and has around 200 patents and publications. Moos has held faculty positions at several major universities and received PhD and AB degrees in chemistry from UC Berkeley and Harvard, respectively.