Confirmed Speakers

Christoph Boss studied chemistry at the University of Bern / Switzerland from 1988 to 1996 and finished his studies in 1996 with a Ph D in synthetic organic chemistry under the supervision of Prof Reinhart Keese. He spent a postdoctoral year at The Scripps Research Institute in LaJolla in the group of Prof. Julius Rebek and afterwards returned to Switzerland to start working in a Process Research group in a Speciality and Custom Chemicals Company (CABB) for one year. Then he moved to Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd in early 1999 to start working as a lab head in medicinal chemistry. He was promoted to group leader in 2002 and to Director Medicinal Chemistry and Senior Group Leader in 2004 and to Senior Director Medicinal Chemistry, Senior Group Leader in 2006. His research interests are manifold and he contributed to the identification of the endothelin antagonist Macitentan (marketed as Opsumit®), to several renin inhibitors entering clinical trials as well as to three orexin receptor antagonists of which the most advanced is in phase II clinical development at the moment. Since 2013 he is Senior Director, Senior Group Leader of the "Chemistry Technology and Lead Discovery" Team, responsible for early projects chemistry support, hit-to-lead projects, the screening compound collection, all aspects of computational chemistry, the high throughput medicinal chemistry team, and the analytics and purification team. Dr. Boss is a co-inventor on 100 published patent applications and a co-author on more than 55 papers, abstracts, book chapters, commentaries, editorials and reviews.

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Dr. Peter Nussbaumer has more than 30 years of industry experience in drug discovery and early drug development. Currently, he is Managing Director and Head of Medicinal Chemistry at the Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC) in Dortmund, Germany. In this function Peter has been co-responsible for building-up and running this unique translational drug discovery organisation founded by the Max Planck Society, working at the interface of academia and industry. He is member of several international scientific advisory boards and serves as advisor to private and public funding bodies. Peter is (co)author of >25 patent applications and >70 peer-reviewed publications and referee to various journals. Before joining LDC, Peter was Executive Director at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Vienna, Austria, heading the Chemistry Department. Peter has a Dr. degree from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria.

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