Join us for the 3rd annual Bringing Chemistry to Medicine symposium, a virtual event featuring talks by leading experts from around the globe working at the interface of chemical and biomedical sciences. Speakers represent expertise across a spectrum of research areas, including therapeutic regulation of transcription and chromatin, computational biology, and chemical biology. The event will span two days with focused themes: Transcription Therapy on Thursday, July 21, 2022, and Frontiers in Chemical Biology, on Friday, July 22, 2022
This symposium, hosted by the St. Jude Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics and the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center, is a component of the institution’s strategic objective to establish a global hub focused on the emerging field of transcription-targeted therapeutics.
To enable broad participation and interaction among trainees and scientists around the world, registration is free.
Speakers
Please watch this page for coming updates on additional speakers and agenda.
July 21, 2022

Scott Armstrong, MD, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Bradley Bernstein, MD, PhD
Dana Farber Cancer Institute

Clifford Brangwynne, PhD
Princeton University

Jolanta Grembecka, PhD
University of Michigan

Tanja Mittag, PhD
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Geeta Narlikar, PhD
University of California, San Francisco

Fraydoon Rastinejad, PhD
University of Oxford

Ken Zaret, PhD
University of Pennsylvania
July 22, 2022

Ray Deshaies, PhD
Amgen, Inc.

Matt Disney, PhD
Scripps Research Institute (Florida)

Ron Dror, PhD
Stanford University

Dorothee Kern, PhD
Brandeis University

Judith Klinman, PhD
University of California, Berkeley

David Moore, PhD
University of California, Berkeley

Peter Schultz, PhD
Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla)

Derek Tan, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Watch our Archived Lectures
In 2020 and 2021, St. Jude hosted exciting two-day events focused on Transcription Therapy and Chemical Biology and Therapeutics.
Transcription Therapy at St. Jude
Over decades of research, scientists in the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center and others have discovered that several pediatric cancers emerge due to disruption in chromatin and epigenetic states and dysfunctional transcriptional regulation. While gene regulation in general has long been considered “undruggable,” scientists in the St. Jude Department of Chemical Biology & Therapeutics (CBT) have created synthetic gene regulators and are devising new chemical approaches to inhibit or degrade malfunctioning components of chromatin and gene regulatory machineries. This work builds on the history of St. Jude as a pioneer in the therapeutic use of small molecules targeting gene regulation, most notably the application of glucocorticoid receptor agonists into chemotherapy regimens for pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic lymphoma (ALL). The drugging of this transcription factor helped to dramatically increase overall survival rates for newly diagnosed ALL to 94% at St. Jude.
Learn more about transcription therapy at St. Jude Learn more