Associate Director, EMD Serono, Inc.
Dr. Fomekong Nanfack is Associate Director at EMD Serono, a pharmaceutical company, and a division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Dr. Fomekong Nanfack is leading the “structural and Digital Drug Discovery” group, an interdisciplinary team of scientists built around a core of experts to drive drug discovery of small molecules and biologics. The unique approach of the group is to combine experimental science such as crystallography with quantitative and qualitative in silico approaches that span computational chemistry and biology, structural biology, mathematics and data science.
The group focus is the discovery of novel targets and molecules using computational methods such as rational library design, virtual screening, and structure-based target druggability assessment. One equally important aspect of his group is to improve molecule candidates with the potential to become therapeutics in areas like oncology or immunology. Optimization of the molecules not only involves binding affinity, potency, developability, biophysical properties and physical-chemistry characteristics, but also better selection at an earlier phase. The processes in place are based on in silico approaches such as computational properties prediction, structural protein design or structure determination.
Prior to joining EMD Serono, Dr. Fomekong Nanfack was in Geneva, Switzerland at Merck Serono, where he held a Computational Biologist position focusing on antibody engineering and bioinformatics for molecular biology. In his early professional years, prior to joining the pharma industry, Dr. Fomekong Nanfack has worked in image processing and computational finance.
After earning an associate degree in Yaoundé (Cameron) and then an MSc in computer science and mathematics from the University of Geneva (Switzerland), Dr. Fomekong Nanfack completed his PhD in computational biology, with a focus on systems biology at the Universität van Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 2009.