James A. Hendrix obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in chemistry from Colorado State University. Dr. Hendrix spent 18 years working at Sanofi-Aventis and predecessor companies, where he rose to level of senior director, U.S. site head for CNS research. He also spent two years working in biotech with various companies. Dr. Hendrix is currently director, global science initiatives, at the Alzheimer’s Association. He provides leadership advancing the Association’s science agenda. Specifically, he manages industry consortia and assists with the $100 million dollar Imaging Dementia-Evidence for Amyloid Scanning (IDEAS) Study. He has published more than 50 scientific publications and patents.

Ms. Ambreen Irshad Sheikh obtained her education with 1^st class distinctions from the NED University of Engineering and Technology and the Sindh Board of Technical Education, both in Karachi, Pakistan. She has worked in the publishing industry for the past 15 years, and is currently Director (Publications) at Bentham Science Publishers. Due to her extensive experience in scientific publishing, she is currently also an Associate Editor for Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry of Bentham Science Publishers.

PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain, 2005. IKERBASQUE professor of Department of Organic Chemistry II, University of Basque Country (UPV/EHU) focused on Cheminformatics, Complex Networks, and Data Analysis. More than ten years of experience as professor, researcher, editor, and conference chairman. Pro bono consultant for research funding agencies such as US NSF, BMBF Germany, BBSRC United Kingdom, etc. Hirsch Index H = 45, >170 JCR research papers, >10 PhD thesis supervised, two patents in Medicinal Chemistry and Nanosciences, and >10 software co-authored. Top ranked at the Publons worldwide index for editors and reviewers.

Dr. Fall studied chemistry at the “Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Strasbourg” (ENSCS) (France). After receiving his PhD degree from the University of Paris XI (Orsay) in 1986 he spent 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southampton with Prof Philip Kocienski. Dr. Fall is Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Vigo (Spain). He is the co-author of over 103 peer-reviewed articles, 12 patents and 11 book chapters. He supervised 15 Ph.D theses and 26 Master’s theses. He is currently member of the Editorial Board of Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, CTMC, published by Bentham Science Publishers.

Hiroshi Nagase, Ph.D. is a Principal Investigator and Professor of International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS), University of Tsukuba, Japan. Dr. Nagase obtained Ph.D. degree in 1976 from Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Nagoya University. He entered to Basic Research Laboratories, Toray Industries, Inc. in 1976. He spent postdoctoral years in 1985-1987 at University of Minnesota, U.S.A. He became a director of Pharmaceutical Research Laboratories, Toray Industries, Inc. in 2001. He moved to Kitasato University as a full Professor in 2004 and then moved to the current position in 2013.

Dr. Xin-Shan Ye obtained his Ph.D. degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1996. After three and a half years of post-doctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute, he went back to China in 2000. He is now Changjiang Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University. Currently his research concerns the development of new methodologies or strategies for oligosaccharide assembly, synthesis and evaluation of carbohydrate mimetics as new therapeutical agents, carbohydrate-based vaccine development, and chemical glycobiology. He has published more than 130 scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals and is a named inventor of 10 issued China and US patents.

Dr. Andricopulo holds a doctorate in Organic Chemistry from the Federal University of Santa Catarina and University of Michigan and a post-doctoral degree in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Michigan. He is professor at the University of Sao Paulo and has experience in medicinal chemistry and drug design. He coordinates the Laboratory of Medicinal and Computational Chemistry and is a member of the executive committee and technology transfer coordinator of the Center for Research and Innovation in Biodiversity and Drug Discovery (CIBFar/FAPESP). He was secretary general, president-elect and president of the Brazilian Chemical Society (SBQ). He has published more than 160 scientific articles and 15 book chapters. He is a full member of the Sao Paulo State Academy of Sciences (ACIESP).

Dr. Carlier obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his independent academic career at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and moved to Virginia Tech in 2000, where he is Professor of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry, and Deputy Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Drug Discovery. He has more than 90 refeered papers and has 9 granted U.S. Patents. Dr. Carlier is currently the North American Editor of this journal (Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, CTMC, published by Bentham Science Publishers).

Dr. Bertho is research engineer of the French National Center of Research (CNRS). He manages the NMR platform of Paris Descartes University, Paris (FR). Dr. Bertho is working to promote NMR in a clinical environment in France. Since 2012, Dr. Bertho supervise pilot studies with French Parisian hospitals to evidence the application of metabolomics by NMR in clinical biology. Previously, Dr. Bertho served as the Head of the Paris Descartes University's NMR team. Dr. Bertho holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics from Pierre & Marie Curie University, Paris. Notably, Dr. Bertho has authored more than 70 manuscripts, 1 patent and 2 reviews.

Maria Laura Bolognesi completed a Ms in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Bologna in 1990 before undertaking PhD studies with Prof. Carlo Melchiorre. In 1994 she moved to a post-doctoral position at the University of Minnesota with Prof. Philip Portoghese. In 1998, Maria Laura was appointed as an Assistant Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Bologna. In 2005 she was promoted to Associate Professor. From June to August 2009 she was a visiting professor at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid and “Special Visiting Researcher” of the University of Brasilia for the 2014-2016 period.

Professor David Fairlie Undergraduate (Adelaide). Postgraduate (Australian National University, New South Wales). Postdoctoral (Stanford, Toronto). He is a Professor and Division Head, of Institute Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Australia and Senior Principal Research Fellow 2011-2021 (National Health and Medical Research Council); Federation Fellow 2006-2011, He is also a Professorial Fellow 2002-2006 (Australian Research Council). He Served on academic and industry advisory panels, company boards, international grant panels. Professor David Fairlie is involved in start-up companies (Australia, USA) including Scientific Director and CSO. Consulted to many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in Nth America and Europe on chemistry, drug discovery, enzyme and GPCR modulators, peptidomimetics, pharmacology. He is a part of ~30 medicinal chemists, cell biologists, immunologists, pharmacologist’s researches.

Dr. Rathi obtained Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from University of Delhi and works as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Hansraj College University Enclave, University of Delhi, India. He is recipient of young scientist fellowship and early career research award from Ministry of Science of Technology, Govt. of India.

Currently, Dr. Rathi is visiting Assistant Professor at Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), Cambridge, USA. He has published more than 28 papers in various journals of National and International repute. He holds the editorial membership of Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, Chemical Biology Letters and executive editorial membership for Bentham Science eBooks.

Dr. Liming Shao，Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at School of Pharmacy, Fudan University. Dr. Shao was a senior director at Sepracor Inc./Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. in drug discovery research. For over 20 years, as a medicinal chemist, Dr. Shao participated in or led programs that cover a broad range of drug discovery research and development and which have resulted numerous clinical candidates both in US and China.

CLAUDIU T. SUPURAN is professor of medicinal chemistry at the Neurofarba Department, Section of Pharmaceutical and Nutriceutical Sciences, University of Florence, Italy. He has published more than 1250 papers, his Hirsch factor is h = 110; the number of citations since 1995 > 49800. His main research interest is on enzyme inhibitors, and especially carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, of which he discovered several new classes in the last years. For the last 25 years the main interest of his research was focused on metallo-enzymes and their modulators of activity. In 2013 he was rated as the most cited scientists in Pharmacology & Toxicology by LabTimes.

Dr. Caldwell obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Physical Chemistry from Indiana University, Indiana, USA, and followed with postdoctoral work in mass spectrometry at the University of Alberta, Canada. Currently Dr. Caldwell is a Senior Scientific Directors at Janssen Research and Development and is the Head of US Analytical Sciences and Metabolomics. He has published more than 100 scientific publications and is a named inventor of 2 issued U.S patents. In addition, Dr. Caldwell has written 21 book chapters on various analytical/ADME topics, 1 book on Enzyme Kinetics, and edited an additional 9 books.

F. Ivy Carroll received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Auburn University and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina. He joined RTI in 1961 as a Research Chemist and rose steadily to the position of Vice President of the Chemistry and Life Sciences Group, 1996–2001. Dr. Carroll also served as Director of the Center for Organic and Medicinal Chemistry from 1975–2007. He is presently a Distinguished Fellow for Medicinal Chemistry. Dr. Carroll has published 508 peer-reviewed publications, 34 book chapters, and 51 patents.

Nicola Antonio Colabufo received his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry in 1996 from University of Bari, Italy. After working as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the synthesis of GPCRs ligands, he worked in biological evaluation of GPCRs andσ receptors ligands. Since 2005 he has been Associate Professor and was involved in the development of new compounds for reversal of MDR. He is author and coauthor of numerous papers in the MDR field, edited a text book on MDR in antitumor treatment (ResearchSignPost),and was Guest Editor of a special issue on the role of ABC pumps in drug transport (CTMC). Currently, he is developing potential PET radiotracers to visualize P-gp expression and function in tumor progression and in CNS. He is author of 140 papers and 12 patents following reported. He is full Professor starting from January 2014.

Dr. Riccardo Concu is a researcher at Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal. He received his European Ph.D. at the University of Cagliari, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Chemistry. His researches are in the broad area of computational chemistry and cheminformatics. On one hand, he has been developing new QSAR models in order to predict protein function, drug targets and Nanoparticle toxicity. In this sense, he has been involved in various European project aimed at assessing the nanoparticle toxicity. On the other hand, he has been working on the development of molecular dynamics simulation aimed at the study of molecular imprinted polymers and self-assembled monolayers.

Miles Congreve is Vice President of Chemistry at Heptares Therapeutics, having previously held positions at Astex Therapeutics and GSK. Miles has a background in structure and fragment-based drug design, participating in the discovery of a several agents currently in clinical trials including Ribociclib, Lanabecestat, Onalespib and Erdafitinib. Miles obtained a BSc in biological chemistry from Leicester University and a PhD in synthetic chemistry from Cambridge University. Miles is co-author of over 130 publications and patents. In 2015 Miles was co-recipient of the RSC Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize for the seminal contributions to GPCR drug discovery made by Heptares.

Yanming Du, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Baruch S. Blumberg Institute (BSBI). Dr. Du has training in organic chemistry, and more than ten years of expertise in medicinal chemistry for infectious diseases. He received his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Iowa, and had post-doctoral training at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development. Dr. Du is also an Adjunct Professor in the Drexel University College of Medicine and The Commonwealth Medical College (TCMC). Dr. Du has published 25 scientific papers and is an inventor of 10 patents/patent applications.

Cláudio M. Gomes is Associate Professor with aggregation at the Faculty of Sciences University of Lisboa where he heads the Protein Folding and Misfolding Laboratory as part of BioISI Biosystems and Integrative Sciences Institute. He obtained is PhD in Biochemistry (1999) from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, as a graduate of the Gulbenkian Ph.D. program in Biology and Medicine, and holds Habilitation (Agregação) in Biochemistry (2013). He has extensive publishing and editorial activities, and is a prolific author with +100 papers in international peer reviewed indexed journals.

Dr. Hudkins obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Medicinal Chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Master of Science degree in Organic Chemistry from Old Dominion University. His research and expertise in neuroscience and oncology produced over 10 new chemical entities advancing into clinical and preclinical development. Dr. Hudkins has more than 185 scientific publications and presentations and is an inventor on 85 U.S patents. Dr. Hudkins is currently a Senior Fellow in Medicinal Chemistry with Teva Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Jacobson Chief of the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry and the Molecular Recognition Section at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Dr. Jacobson is a medicinal chemist with interests in the structure and pharmacology of G protein-coupled receptors, in particular receptors for adenosine and for purine and pyrimidine nucleotides. He obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. He has published more than 700 scientific publications and was inducted into the American Chemical Society’s Division of Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame in 2009.

Eusebio Juaristi was born in Querétaro (México) in 1950 and studied Chemistry at Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey (B. Sc.) and at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (Ph. D.). Following postdoctoral stays in the University of California-Berkeley and Syntex, California, he returned to Mexico in 1979, to the Chemistry Department of CINVESTAV-IPN, where he is currently Emeritus Professor of Chemistry. He has been Visiting Professor at the ETH-Zurich (1985-1986 and 1992-1993), UC-Berkeley (1999-2000) and RWTH-Aachen (2013). In 1998 he received Mexico’s Presidential Medal of Science and in 2006 he became a member of El Colegio Nacional, highest academic distinction in Mexico.

Dr. Bruce E. Maryanoff worked in Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical companies for 36 years, retiring in 2010. He is affiliated with The Scripps Research Institute, Baruch S. Blumberg Institute, and Pennsylvania Drug Discovery Institute. He made myriad contributions in medicinal and organic chemistry, and is an internationally renowned expert in drug design and discovery. He invented TOPAMAX^® topiramate, a billion-dollar drug used for treating epilepsy and migraine. His efforts led to 13 compounds entering human clinical trials. He published 281 scientific papers, is inventor on 101 U.S. Patents, presented 187 invited lectures, and mentored 11 postdocs. Dr. Maryanoff is Associate Editor of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. He has received three American Chemical Society national awards and a Smissman Award from the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Division; he was inducted into the Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame.

Professor Des Richardson, Ph.D., D.Sc. (UWA), F.F.Sc., FRCPath (UK), holds the Chair of Cancer Cell Biology at the University of Sydney, Australia, and is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia Senior Principal Research Fellow. He has published over 400 articles, reviews, patents, chapters, etc. in his career as author/co-author (more than 23,307 citations; Google Scholar Accessed 2 Nov 2017). As a major translational research achievement, he has developed the anti-cancer and anti-metastatic drug, DpC, which overcomes P-glycoprotein mediated drug resistance. This has led to commercialisation of DpC and the development of the international company, Oncochel Therapeutics LLC, USA, and its Australian subsidiary, Oncochel Therapeutics Pty Ltd.

Webster Santos received his BS and PhD degrees in Chemistry at the University of Virginia. He was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in the department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University before he began his independent academic career at Virginia Tech in 2006. He is currently an associate professor of Chemistry and the Cliff and Agnes Lilly Faculty fellow of drug discovery. His research efforts include designing inhibitors of RNA involved in HIV-1, lipid kinase inhibitors, mitochondrial protonophores, and developing borylation methodology. He is a co-author on over 60 refereed papers and 9 patents.

Dr. Garry Smith has worked for 23 years as a medicinal chemist in pharmaceutical research and development including big pharma (Merck), biotech and contract research organizations. He is currently the Director of Chemistry at the Fox Chase Chemical Diversity Center, Inc. He is an Associate Professor of the PA Drug Discovery Institute and serves as a grants reviewer for multiple NIH study sections and the Rett Syndrome Foundation. Dr. Smith has co-authored over 30 scientific publications and is a co-inventor on 8 U.S. patents.

Bryan W.I. Tou is the CEO of HAZALYST MEDICAL R&D Ltd, Co, Macau China. Dr. Tou received the doctor of medicine (MD) degree from China Medical University in Taiwan. In the past, he devoted his energy to modernized herbal medicine and natural products by applying the knowledge of computational and systems biology. Now, he is interested in using biobank and electronic medical record to study drug adverse effects, prescription and utilization patterns and potential novel indication of approval drug.

Dr. Jia Zhou is currently a tenured Professor in the Chemical Biology Program at University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), USA. He was educated with a PhD degree and trained as a postdoctoral research fellow from Nankai University, University of Virginia, and Georgetown University Medical Center, respectively. He has over 20 years of research experience in medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and development including 7 years of industrial experience in pharmaceuticals. Dr. Zhou’s research interest is drug discovery and development of novel small molecules as potential therapeutics for the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders, cancer, inflammation, and infectious diseases. He is an author of more than 130 papers, 7 book chapters and an inventor of 18 patents.

He holds a degree in Industrial Chemistry from Fluminense Federal University (2002) and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Universidade Federal Fluminense (2007). He attended postdoctoral studies at the University of Aveiro (2007-2008) and at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2008-2009). He is currently Associate Professor at the Fluminense Federal University at the Institute of Chemistry at the Department of Organic Chemistry. He is editor-in-chief of the Virtual Chemistry Journal and member of the board of directors of the Brazilian Chemical Society. He is a Young Scientist of our State (FAPERJ) since 2014 and an Affiliate Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences 2016-2020 edition. He has experience in Organic Chemistry, with emphasis on Organic Synthesis, working mainly on the following topics: carbohydrates, heterocycles, diazocompostos, triazoles, quinones.