PROTACs - Targeted Protein Degradation: Promises and Challenges Ahead

September 29, 2020 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

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Add to Calendar 9/29/2020 12:00:00 PM 9/29/2020 1:00:00 PM PROTACs - Targeted Protein Degradation: Promises and Challenges Ahead Targeted protein degradation is an emerging therapeutic modality which has made tremendous progress and attracted massive investment in recent years. This modality is a class of bifunctional small molecules composed of an E3 ligase binder linked to a target protein binding moiety. It offers the possibility to degrade any intracellular target proteins regardless if there is a well-defined binding pocket in the target protein. Therefore, it opens numerous opportunities to drug many previously unreachable targets. However, the molecules tend to be bulky, floppy, greasy, and lack drug likeness properties. Nevertheless, increasing preclinical animal data has demonstrated the desired efficacy. Very recently, the early clinical safety and PK results are encouraging. In this forum our expert panel will share key learnings about this novel modality and discuss strategies to overcome potential challenges ahead.

Sponsored by MassBio's Drug Discovery forum working group.


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Director, Head of Chemical Biology and Proteomics at AstraZeneca
Paola Castaldi is the Director and global Head of Chemical Biology & Proteomics at AstraZeneca. Her team is focused on supporting drug discovery programs across all therapeutics areas using state of the art technologies with specific emphasis on target identification, target engagement, MoA and off-target determination. Paola has played a critical role to establish a multi-omics and a therapeutic protein degradation platform at AstraZeneca providing both strategic and logistics directions. Before AstraZeneca, Paola was a key contributor of the Chemical Genetics group at Sanofi Oncology, Cambridge, MA with a focus on phenotypic drug discovery projects for the Wnt and KRAS oncogenic pathways. Prior to Sanofi Paola was at Makoto Life Sciences, where she was responsible for the chemistry strategies towards the identification of the PRPK/TPRKB complex as validated biological targets of immunomodulatory drugs that include lenalidomide (Revlimid), pomalidomide (Pomalyst) and thalidomide implicated in multiple myeloma. Paola Castaldi completed her undergraduate studies in pharmaceutical chemistry and received her Laurea (MSc) at University of Padova, Italy. She then went on to conduct graduate research studies at Imperial College London, UK and postdoctoral studies at UCSD and Boston University.