DANA FARBER TARGETED PROTEIN DEGRADATION - Key Persons

Alyssa Verano, PhD Alyssa Verano is a Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca, where she is a medicinal chemist in the Oncology Chemistry group. Prior to joining AZ in 2020, Alyssa was a postdoctoral research fellow in Prof. Nathanael Gray's lab where she worked on the synthesis and development of monovalent degraders of transcription factors and novel neo-substrates, as well as bispecific degraders to target kinases. Her research has also focused on the development of covalent inhibitors of several kinase targets. She completed her PhD training in organic chemistry and pharmacology under the supervision of Prof. Derek Tan at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College. Her graduate research centered on the stereoselective synthesis and biological evaluation of spiroketal natural products. She is excited to remain a part of the DFCI Targeted Protein Degradation Webinar team while at AZ.

Job Titles:

• Lead Scientist in the Fischer Lab

Katherine Donovan is a Lead Scientist in the Fischer Lab where she works on the development of molecular-glues and PROTAC molecules for targeted protein degradation. She completed her PhD training in protein biochemistry and structural biology at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. After joining the Fischer Lab as a Postdoc she developed an interest in proteomics as a specialized technology for quantifying protein-level expression changes in response to various perturbations. Katherine set up and led proteomics teams focused on degrader screening and target identification in the Fischer Lab as well as in the Center for Protein Degradation. She has used proteomics technology to identify the degradation targets of many molecules including the identification of SALL4 as the protein likely underlying the teratogenicity of thalidomide. Katherine led a large effort to map the degradable kinome and now to aid her quest to map the degradable proteome she has recently started a public degradation proteomics initiative which provides free target mapping of degraders. Katherine continues to work on several projects related to ligase biology and protein degradation and also oversees the TPD proteomics operation in the Fischer Lab and Center for Protein Degradation

Job Titles:

• Group Leader in the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute

Mikołaj Słabicki is a Group Leader in the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute, a member of Dr. Benamin Ebert's Laboratory, and a Senior Staff Scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Słabicki employs functional genomics, high-throughput screening, chemical biology, cell biology, and biochemical techniques to identify and characterize new molecular glue degraders and novel mechanisms of targeted protein degradation. Dr. Słabicki is a founding co-organizer of the Dana-Farber Targeted Protein Degradation Webinar series that features biweekly talks from experts in the field. Dr. Słabicki's research expanded the repertoire of molecular glue degraders and showed that the CDK inhibitor, CR8, induced degradation of cyclin K without a canonical substrate receptor. His research also identified an alternative mechanism of targeted protein degradation, in which a small molecule, BI-3802, induces the highly specific, reversible polymerization and subsequent degradation of the transcription repressor BCL6. Dr. Słabicki graduated with an M.S. in Biotechnology from the Technical University of Łódź, in Poland and completed his Ph.D. under the guidance of Dr. Frank Buchholz at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. Dr. Słabicki completed his post-doctoral research as a Marie Skłodowska Curie Scholar in Dr. Benjamin Ebert's laboratory at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, United States, and in Stefan Fröhling's laboratory at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany.

Radosław Nowak is currently a Biochemistry and Structural Biology Group Lead at the Center for Protein Degradation as well as a scientist in the laboratory of Eric Fischer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research interests revolve around transforming structural, biophysical, biochemical and proteomic insights surrounding PROTACs and other degrader molecules into predictive computational framework to accelerate degrader discovery and validation. Dr. Nowak received his DPhil from University of Oxford in the group of prof. Udo Oppermann working on development of inhibitors for histone lysine demethylases, a class of epigenetic readers.