Medicinal Chemistry Approaches to Personalized Medicine

Karen Lackey is currently the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of JanAush, a drug discovery company focused on creating life-saving medicines in inflammation, oncology, and kinase and signal inhibition. She joined Hoffmann-La Roche in 2010 as Vice President and Head of Medicinal Chemistry at the Nutley, NJ (USA) site, where she was responsible for oncology, inflammation, virology and new technologies until the site closure in 2013. In her previous role, she was the Vice President of Chemistry, Molecular Discovery Research for GlaxoSmithKline. Most importantly, she played an active role in the discovery of the dual erbB2/EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor, lapatinib, currently marketed as Tykerb. Karen has over 85 publications and patents, principally covering oncology, inflammation, kinase inhibition, gene family molecular design and cellular signaling. Bruce Roth is currently Vice President of Discovery Chemistry in Genentech Research and Early Development at South San Francisco (USA). Prior to joining Genentech in 2007, he was Vice President of Discovery Chemistry at the Pfizer Global Research and Development Ann Arbor site. Bruce began his career as a medicinal chemist at Warner-Lambert, Parke-Davis in 1982 and is best known as the inventor of Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium), for which he has received numerous awards, including the 2003 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Invention, the 2003 Gustavus J. Esselen Award and the 2013 Perkin Medal. In 2008 he was named one of the American Chemical Society's Heroes in Chemistry.