University of Colorado AMC, UK.
Dr. LaBarbera is the founding Director of the Center for Drug Discovery (CDD) established in 2020. The mission of the CDD is to lead a Colorado-wide drug discovery “grassroots” initiative based at CU AMC while encompassing other academic institutions and industries in Colorado. The CDD’s objectives are to facilitate drug discovery and development and become a central hub for drug discovery in Colorado. A major research goal of the CDD is to harness the diverse biology and disease models at CU AMC and throughout Colorado for HTS/HCS drug discovery. Recent funding of the CDD has led to the comprehensive drug discovery and development shared resource (D3SR) that is affiliated with the CDD and the CU Cancer Center. The D3SR features new custom equipment from PerkinElmer, including an Explorer G3 Workstation, Opera Phenix Plus HCS system, a Janus G3, EnVision multimode plate reader, and a custom BioSpot (Tek-Matic/BioFluidix).
Shandong University, China
Zhao Baobing is a professor at the School of Pharmacy of Shandong University and a doctoral supervisor in pharmacology; a young expert of “Taishan Scholar” in Shandong Province and a Qilu Young Scholar of Shandong University. Graduated from Xiamen University with a Ph.D. in Biology. From 2012 to 2017, he studied abroad at Northwestern University in the United States for 5 years, serving as a postdoctoral researcher and research assistant professor. From May 2018 to present, he serves as a professor at the School of Pharmacy of Shandong University. He has long been committed to the discovery of active lead compounds and potential drug targets, focusing on the development of hematopoietic cells, revealing new mechanisms of regulation of blood cell development, elucidating the pathogenesis of malignant hematological diseases, and discovering potential drug targets. So far, he has published more than 40 SCI papers, of which he has published more than 30 SCI papers as the first or corresponding author in authoritative international academic journals such as Advanced Science, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Leukemia, Developmental Cell, Pharmacology & Therapeutics. In recent years, he has presided over 7 National Natural Science Foundation projects, provincial talent projects and other projects. He serves as a youth member of the Teaching and Science Popularization Committee of the Chinese Pharmacological Society, a director of the Shandong Provincial Pharmacological Society, a director of the Society of Cell Biology, a member of the Provincial Medical Association’s Cord Blood Clinical Application Multidisciplinary Joint Committee, a National Natural Science Foundation communication review expert, and a provincial industry and informatization expert. Registered expert with the Department; guest editor of SCI journal Front Cell Dev Biol, editorial board member of TMR-Pharm Research; reviewer of journals such as Molecular Cell, Advanced Science, Eur J Med Chem, and Blood Advances.
University of Montreal, Canada
Marie Kmita works as a Directrice Unité De Recherche Génétique Et Développement at IRCM Foundation, which is a Hospitals & Physicians Clinics company with an estimated 345 employees; and founded in 1967. Marie graduated from Université de Reims and is currently based in Montreal, Canada
Imperial College, UK
Dr. Nikolaos Trasanidis is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Haematology and the Hugh & Josseline Langmuir Centre for Myeloma Research. He received his PhD degree in cancer epigenomics from Imperial College London in 2020. He has a strong expertise in the application of high-throughput (“omics”) technologies in clinical research, including prognostic markers discovery, precision medicine, molecular diagnosis and targeted therapies development. His research interests focus on the development of systems medicine strategies to reveal the genetic and epigenetic alterations underlying multiple myeloma disease initiation and progression, for the discovery of novel molecular targets and personalized therapies.
Stanford University, USA
Dr. Bahauddeen Alrfaei is a Scientist in the Dept. of Cellular Therapy and Cancer Research at King Abdullah International Research Center. He earned his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Pathology from the University of Wisconsin Madison, USA. Later, he did a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, USA. Dr. Alrfaei research focus is stem cell biology relevant to neural development and cancer.
Drexel University College of Medicine, US
Christian Sell, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Drexel University College of Medicine. Prior to joining the College of Medicine, he was an associate investigator at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. He had previously worked as an assistant professor at Medical College of Pennsylvania (now Drexel College of Medicine), where he earned the Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in Aging “Young Investigator” Award, and also served as the director of the Molecular Pathobiology Graduate program. In addition, Dr. Sell has held positions at Thomas Jefferson University and Temple University.
