Successful Drug Discovery

János Fischer is a Senior Research Scientist at Richter Plc., Budapest, Hungary. He received his MSc and PhD degrees in organic chemistry from the Eotvos University of Budapest under Professor A. Kucsman. Between 1976 and 1978, he was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Bonn under Professor W. Steglich. He has worked at Richter Plc. since 1981 where he participated in the research and development of leading cardiovascular drugs in Hungary. His main interest is analogue based drug discovery. He is the author of some 100 patents and scientific publications. Since 2014 he is Chair of the Subcommittee on Drug Discovery and Development of IUPAC. He received an honorary professorship at the Technical University of Budapest. Christian Klein is Head of Oncology Programs at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich, specialized in the discovery, validation and preclinical development of antibody based cancer immunotherapies and bispecific antibodies. During his 15 years at Roche he has made major contributions to the development and approval of obinutuzumab, the preclinical development of eight clinical stage bispecific antibodies/immunocytokines that are currently at the clinical stage, as well as the development of Roche's novel proprietary bispecific antibody platforms, e.g., the CrossMAb technology. Wayne E. Childers is Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. Wayne received his BA (1979) degree from Vanderbilt University in chemistry and PhD (1984) in organic chemistry from the University of Georgia under the direction of Harold Pinnick. He served as an assistant adjunct professor at Bucknell University before accepting a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the laboratories of Dr. Cecil Robinson. He then joined Wyeth, working in numerous therapeutic areas, including psychiatric diseases, stroke, and Alzheimer's disease, and the treatment of chronic pain. He stayed with Wyeth for 22 years, before joining the faculty of Temple University in 2010.