First Round of Abstract Submission Ends: Sep 15, 2025
Extended Early Bird Ends: Jan 28, 2025
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Plato A. Magriotis
University of Patras, Greece
Title: TMS Imines are excellent Dienophiles in Direct Inverse Electron Demand Diels-Alder Reactions with Electron Deficient 2-Azadienes: Unprecedented Diaza-Diels-Alder Approach to the Synthesis of Substituted Piperazines and a Pharmacophore-Directed Retrosynthetic Strategy to the Synthesis of the Antitumor Drug Ecteinascidin-743 and more Accessible Analogs therteof
Since 2006, Plato A. Magriotis, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Pharmacy, School of Health Sciences at the University of Patras in Greece and a Research Affiliate with the Department of Chemistry at New York University. Magriotis received his Ph.D. in Chemical Biology working with Professor Francis Johnson at the Department of Chemistry of Stony Brook University in 1983 and did Postdoctoral work at Harvard University with Nobel Laureate E. J. Corey. He began his academic career at West Virginia University and when presented with a very attractive offer to join Merck & Co. as a senior scientist, he joined the Medicinal Chemistry Department of Merck Pharmaceutical Company in New Jersey. Before assuming his present position, he moved back to Academia as an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at New York University in 2002. Magriotis’ research program focuses on the development of new methodology for the synthesis of relevant pharmacophores applied in drug discovery.
Prof. Collet Dandara
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Title: Will update soon.
Will update soon.
Prof. Yi Zhun Zhu
Macau University of Science and Technology, China
Title: Will update soon.
Will update soon.
Prof. Jian Wan
Central China Normal University, China
Title: Will update soon.
Prof. Dr. Jian Wan, Guizi Scholar Distinguished Professor of Central China Normal University (CCNU), selected for the National High-level Talent Special Support Plan of PRC, the new century outstanding talent of MOE of PRC, former Dean of the Undergraduate School of CCNU.
Mainly engaged in the development and application of state of the art molecular modelling methods, combined with molecular biology, characterization analysis, and organic synthesis etc. techniques to study structure, function and regulation of the novel target protein and ligand complexes.
Prof. Delia Teresa Sponza
Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey
Title: Will update soon.
Will update soon.
Prof. Ivana Cacciatore
University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, Italy
Title: Will update soon.
Prof. Ivana Cacciatore is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy). Her current research focuses on Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology, particularly on the discovery and development of novel antimicrobial compounds and their associated drug delivery systems, capable of interfering with bacterial resistance mechanisms.
She is a founding partner and a member of the Board of Directors of the innovative startup ALGO BIOTECHNOLOGIES s.r.l., where she serves as Chief Innovation Officer (CIO).
Prof. Cacciatore is also the Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Letters in Drug Design and Discovery (International Life Sciences Publishers) and Editorial board member of several journals.
Her research activity is well documented through more than 130 publications in peer-reviewed international scientific journals (H-index: 33), 3 patents, and active participation in national and international congresses. She has established interdisciplinary collaborations with academic institutions and pharmaceutical industries.
Prof. Wenfang Sun
The University of Alabama, USA
Title: Ir(III) and Ru(II) complexes as photosensitizers for phototherapy
Prof. Wenfang Sun is the Robert Ramsay Chair Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Alabama (UA) since Nov. 2022. Prior to joining UA, she was the James Meier Senior Professor and the Water F. and Verna Gehrts Presidential Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the North Dakota State University (NDSU) (2001-2022). She received her B.S. degree in 1990 from Wuhan University, China; and her Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry from the Institute of Photographic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995. She was employed by this institute as an Assistant Professor in 1995, and then as an Associate Professor in 1996. She joined the Department of Physics, University of Alabama at Birmingham as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in 1997, and was promoted to a Research Assistant Professor in 1999. In 2001, she joined NDSU as an Assistant Professor, was tenured and promoted to an Associate Professor in 2007, and became a Full Professor and named the Walter F. and Verna Gehrts Presidential Professor in 2011. She has published 147 peer-reviewed journal papers and 23 conference full papers. She obtained over $10,000,000 research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the American Chemical Society – Petroleum Research Funds (ACS-PRF), and the US Department of Argriculture (USDA), etc. She received numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER Award (2005-2011), the James A. Meier Senior Professorship (2016-2019), the NDSU Fred Waldron Award for Outstanding Research (2012), the NDSU Walter F. and Verna Gehrts Professorship (2011-2013), the NDSU Bison Ambassadors Apple Polisher Honoree (2009), the NDSU Featured Faculty (2006), and the 2nd-Class Chinese Academy of Sciences Natural Science Award (2002). She is a Fellow of the International Associate of Advanced Materials (IAAM). She organized/co-organized, or chaired >20 national or international symposia and presented >110 invited talks or seminars in conferences or universities. Currently, she serves on the editorial board of five international chemistry journals. Her research program focuses on the organic/organometallic photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy, organic/organometallic light emitting materials, optical sensing materials, and optical limiting materials.
Prof. Mohammad Kamil
Lotus Holistic Health Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Title: Novel Natural Products from Medicinal Plants.
Will update soon.
Prof. Yuxin Pei
Northwest A&F University, China
Title: To be confirmed.
Prof. Yuxin Pei did her PhD in 1998 in materials science at China Textile University (Donghua University at present) in Shanghai. After a two-year postdoctoral training at Zhejiang University, she moved to Europe and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Lund University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Technical University of Denmark, and Heidelberg University. Since 2010, she has been a professor of Chemistry at Northwest A&F University. Her current research interests are glycosyl functional nanomaterials via supramolecular assembly for biological and medicinal applications.
Prof. Vladimir Muzykantov
University of Pennsylvania, USA
Title: Vascular nanomedicine delivery: fortuitous homing vs cognizant targeting.
Vladimir Muzykantov (MD in Internal Medicine from First Moscow Medical School, 1980 and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Russian National Cardiology Research Center, 1985), joined PENN in 1993, got tenure in 2003 and in 2010 became a Full Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics. In 2010 he established Center for Targeted Therapeutics and Translational Nanomedicine (CT3N) at PENN, which he directs. For four decades he works on targeted delivery of pharmacological agents in the cardiovascular system. His research focuses on drug delivery by RBCs and endothelial targeting for treatment inflammation, thrombosis and ischemia. He published ~300 papers (h-index 82) and edited a book “Biomedical Aspects of Drug Targeting” (Kluwer, 2003). Honors include: AHA Established Investigator (1996), AHA Bugher Stroke Award (2000), Chair of Transatlantic Airway Conference on Targeting Molecular Signatures in Lungs (Luzerne, 2009), Gordon Conference on Drug Carriers (2012) and HLBI Division of Lung Diseases Workshop “Precision Therapeutics Delivery for Lung Diseases” (2014), Keynote Speaker in many forums. In 2022 he was elected as a Fellow of the International Society of Controlled Drug Release and in 2023 become the inaugural endowed PENN Founders Professor of Nanoparticle Research.
Prof. Viktoria Milkova
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
Title: Controlled aggregation of amyloid peptides in the presence of lipid membrane
The scientific expertise of Prof Viktoria Milkova is in the field of Physical Chemistry, Polymer chemistry, Electrokinetics, Colloid Chemistry, Composite Nanostructures, Microfluidics and Bionanotechnology.
At present, her research is concerned on the investigation of the (bio)polymer adsorption on curved surfaces; design, surface properties and stability of nanoparticles and advanced nanostructured (bio)materials; nanoparticles-liposomes interactions (as a model of interactions with biological membranes) by using mainly the classical theories of colloid science and electrokinetic phenomena in dispersion systems. In the framework of the last research projects in the research team, the recent studies addressed the development of biopolymer-based delivery nano- and micro platforms for target delivery and controlled release of bioactive molecules and drugs with potential application in the therapy of coronavirus infection or for limitation of amyloidosis in the treatment of rare diseases of neuron systems (like Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson’s disease). As target ligands were selected nucleotide sequences, RNA (or aptamers) with high binding affinity to spike protein of different coronaviruses or specific amyloid peptides. Highly interdisciplinary approaches were applied in these studies: microfluidics, biomimetics, thin films, layer-by-layer, etc.
Prof Milkova is a Head of Interfaces and Colloids Department at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Prof. Franz-Josef Meyer-Almes
University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt, Germany
Title: New points of attack for covalent inactivators of human histone deacetylase 8
Franz-Josef Meyer-Almes, Professor for Physical Biochemistry, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. Franz-Josef Meyer-Almes is currently Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt in Germany. He earned his Diploma in Chemistry at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen (Germany) in 1991 and his PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from the same University, working with Prof. Manfred Eigen at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. After completing his PhD, Dr. Meyer-Almes worked as scientist with the biotech start-up Evotec for 7 years. Then he accepted a position as laboratory head in the lead finding unit at Bayer Healthcare AG, where he worked for 3 years. The main focus of his research is in thermodynamics and kinetics of protein-ligand and protein-protein interaction, reaction kinetics and mechanism, biological assay development, drug design, medium throughput compound screening, and fluorescence spectroscopy.
