London, United Kingdom, November 26, 2018 --(PR.com)-- This year�s event will specifically focus on innovations within the field that has the potential to drive the pharmaceutical industry into a new era of medicines, with optimization of the R&D process to become cheaper, faster and increasing the likelihood of drug efficacy and success. These are some of the major obstacles within drug discovery at present, as the process is overall long, expensive and often potential drugs will fail late in clinical trials, wasting resources and time.

SMi is proud to announce the Co-Chairs for the conference: Roderick Hubbard, Professor, University of York, and Senior Fellow, Vernalis Research and Darren Green, Director of Molecular Design, GSK.

Roderick Hubbard, Senior Fellow, University of York & Vernalis Research Ltd
Rod Hubbard has been an academic at York for over 35 years working with methods for analysis and exploitation of protein structure, developing molecular graphics and modelling methods in the 1980s and building Structural Biology at York during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997, he was a founding SAB member of what became Vernalis. Since 2001 he has split his time between Vernalis (fragment and structure based drug discovery) and York (fragment methods for chemical biology and industrial biotechnology). In addition, he works with UK Research Councils and consults with pharmaceutical and technology companies around the world.

Darren Green, Director of Molecular Design, GlaxoSmithKline plc
Darren Green is Director of Molecular Design, GlaxoSmithKline. Based at Stevenage, his group specialises in the application of computational chemistry, machine learning and chemoinformatics methods to drug discovery. Darren also leads the GSK-ex scientia collaboration.

Darren has a PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Manchester and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Key Expert Speakers include:

Tobias Gabriel, Global Head of External Drug Discovery, Novartis
Markus Queisser, Scientific Leader, GlaxoSmithKline
Andrew Popplewell, Head of Antibody Discovery & Engineering, UCB
Hasane Ratni, Expert Scientist, F Hoffmann-La Roche
Helmut Thomas, President and CEO, Cylenium Pharma
Frederic Berst, Senior Investigator, Novartis
Phil Cox, Senior Principal Research Scientist, AbbVie
Christine Prosser, Principal Scientist, UCB
Ulrich Schopfer, Head of Integrated Target & Lead Discovery, Novartis
Edgar Jacoby, Senior Principal Scientist Computational Chemistry, Janssen
Roland Burli, Senior Director, Head of Medicinal Chemistry, AstraZeneca
Vivek Vishnudas, Sr Vice President Drug Discovery & Platform Sciences, Berg LLC
James Dale, Senior Scientist and Head of Chemistry, Nanna Therapeutics
Govinda Bhisetti, Principal Investigator & Head of Computational Chemistry, Biogen
Chris Tame, Research Leader, BenevolentAI
Graham Simpson, Head of Drug Discovery, GTN
Alexander Hillisch, Director, Medicinal Chemistry, Bayer
Dr Nick Camp, Drug Discovery Consultant, Nick Camp Consulting

You can view the full speaker line-up and 2-day agenda on the website.
www.drug-discovery.co.uk/PR1

The conference also has an interactive half day pre conference workshop, which provide extra value to the Drug Discovery Chemistry conference, taking place on Wednesday 20 March 2019 at the same venue.

Morning Workshop: Artificial Intelligence in Drug Discovery
Workshop Leader: Dr Nick Camp, Drug Discovery Consultant, Nick Camp Consulting

If you are interested in participating and attending the conference, you can register at www.drug-discovery.co.uk/PR1 and save �400.

Interested in sponsoring, exhibiting or speaking at this event?

Contact Alia Malick, Director, on +44 (0) 20 827 6168 or email [email protected]

For media enquiries, contact Simi Sapal on +44 (0) 20 7827 6000 or [email protected]

Drug Discovery Chemistry Conference 2019
18 & 19 March 2019
Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, UK
www.drug-discovery.co.uk/PR1
Follow us @SMiPharm
#SMiDrugDischem

About SMi Group: Established since 1993, the SMi Group is a global event-production company that specializes in Business-to-Business Conferences, Workshops, Masterclasses and online Communities. We create and deliver events in the Defence, Security, Energy, Utilities, Finance and Pharmaceutical industries. We pride ourselves on having access to the world�s most forward-thinking opinion leaders and visionaries, allowing us to bring our communities together to Learn, Engage, Share and Network. More information can be found at http://www.smi-online.co.uk