The 5th Bringing Chemistry to Medicine Symposium will be held on October 2-3, 2025 at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. The meeting will be held in a hybrid format. We hope to see you there!
Recap of 2023 event
The 4th Bringing Chemistry to Medicine Symposium featured talks by leading experts from around the globe working at the interface of chemical and biomedical sciences. Speakers represented expertise across various research areas, including therapeutic regulation of transcription and chromatin, computational biology, and chemical biology.
In case you missed the 2023 event or you want to revisit an interesting lecture, please visit the 2023 Bringing Chemistry to Medicine Symposium video archive.
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2023 Speakers and Topics
Thursday, October 5, 2023
Introduction
Dr. James R. Downing
President and Chief Executive Officer
St. Jude Children's Research HospitalTopic:
Chromatin
Nada Jabado, MD, PhD
McGill University
Oncohistones in Disease: From Cancer to...Beyond
Charles W. M. Roberts, MD, PhD
Director, Comprehensive Cancer Center
Executive Vice President
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Chromatin Remodeler Mutations in Cancer: From Mechanisms to Emerging Therapies
Rebecca Johnson
University of North Carolina at Chapel HillAntagonist Development for Chromodomain-Helicase DNA-Binding Protein 1 (CHD1)
Karen Adelman, PhD
Harvard University
Small Molecules inhibitors reveal direct targets of chromatin remodelers
Emily Dykhuizen, PhD
Purdue University
Chemically Targeting Specific Chromatin Remodeling Subcomplexes in Cancer
Joshua Gruber, MD, PhD
UT Southwestern Medical CenterAcetyl-Click Screening Platform Identifies Small-Molecule and Peptide-based Inhibitors of Histone Acetyltransferase 1 (HAT1)
Topic:
Transcription Factors and Co-activators
Anna Mapp, PhD
University of Michigan
A General Strategy for Drugging Transcription Factors
Paramjit Arora, PhD
New York University
Rational Design to Hijack Transcriptional Protein-Protein Interactions
Samantha Bevill, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer InstituteImpact of Supraphysiologic MDM2 Expression on P53Independent Chromatin Networks and Therapeutic Responses in Sarcoma
Topic:
RNA Modifications
Tony Kouzarides, PhD, FMedSci, FRS
University of Cambridge
Targeting RNA Modifying Enzymes in the Treatment of Cancer
Chuan He, PhD
University of Chicago
RNA Methylation in Gene Expression Regulation
Deepak Nijhawan, MD, PhD
UT Southwestern Medical CenterAnticancer Benzoxaboroles Inhibit Pre-mRNA Processing by Direct Inhibition of CPSF3
Closing Remarks
Charles W. M. Roberts, MD, PhD
Friday, October 6, 2023
Topic:
Drugging Transcription
Jun Qi, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Harvard Medical School
Aseem Z. Ansari, PhD
Chair, Department of Chemical Biology & Therapeutics
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Transcription Targeted Therapeutics
Gerald Crabtree, MD
Stanford University
Rewiring Cancer Drivers to Activate Apoptosis
Cheryl Arrowsmith, PhD
University of Toronto
Probing the Human Proteome for Therapeutic Opportunities
Drew Adams, PhD
Case Western Reserve University School of MedicineTargeting the Chromatin-Binding of XPO1 Disrupts NFAT and T Cell Activation
Lunch:
Danny Thomas Lecture Series
Kevan Shokat, PhD
University of California, San Francisco
Overcoming the Undruggable Nature of The Most Common Human Oncogene K-Ras
Topic:
Chemical Control of Proteostasis
Jay Bradner, MD
Gene Control Medicines
Sara Buhrlage, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Harvard Medical School
Harnessing Deubiquitinases for Next-Generation Protein Stability Therapeutics
Gihoon Lee, PhD
Princeton UniversityTime-Resolved Protein Synthesis Reveals Distinct Phases of Oncogenic Signaling and Identifies the ‘Achilles Heel’ of a Liver Cancer FL-HCC
Topic:
Folding and Design
David Baker, PhD
University of Washington
Design of New Protein Function Using Deep Learning
Arabinda Chaudhuri, PhD
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research KolkataIn Vivo Dendritic Cells Targeted DNA Vaccination in Combination with Tumor-Selective Chemotherapy Eradicates Established Mouse Melanoma
Closing Remarks
Aseem Z. Ansari, PhD
Chair, Department of Chemical Biology & Therapeutics
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Watch our Archived Lectures
Each year since 2020, St. Jude has 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