October 1-2, 2026

Bringing Chemistry to Medicine Symposium

In collaboration with Cell Press

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
Virtual option available

On this page:

About
2026 speakers
Abstracts
Accomodations
Registration
Archived Lectures
Past symposia
Transcription Therapy at St. Jude

About the symposium

Mark your calendars for October 1-2, 2026, for the 6th annual Bringing Chemistry to Medicine Symposium. This hybrid event features talks by leading experts from around the globe working at the interface of chemical biology and biomedical sciences. Speakers represent expertise across various research areas, including therapeutic regulation of transcription and chromatin, AI, data science, and chemical biology.

The symposium is hosted by the St. Jude Chemical Biology and Therapeutics and the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center. The event is designed to advance collaboration and engagement in the emerging field of transcription-targeted therapeutics.

This symposium will be hosted in a hybrid format, giving you the option to attend in-person and to enjoy the enhanced networking and experience the beautiful St. Jude campus in Memphis, TN. As always, we also welcome virtual attendees to join us from around the world. To encourage broad participation from researchers around the world registration is free.

2026 speakers

Martin Burke, MD, PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Benjamin Cravatt, PhD, Scripps Research
Michael Erb, PhD, Scripps Research
Fleur Ferguson, PhD, University of California San Diego
Christoph Gorgulla, PhD, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Laura Kiessling, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Christina Leslie, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Lingyin Li, PhD, Stanford University
Brian Liau, PhD, Harvard University
Jian Ma, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University
Paul Mischel, MD, Stanford University
Brian Shoichet, PhD, University of California San Francisco
Jussi Taipale, PhD, Wellcome Sanger Institute; Karolinska Institutet; University of Helsinki
Xiao Wang, PhD, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Richard Young, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abstracts

Bringing Chemistry to Medicine welcomes abstract submissions from trainees, postdoctoral fellows, and established investigators working in drug discovery, chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, transcription therapy, and related fields. You must be registered for the symposium as an in-person attendee to submit an abstract. The deadline to submit an abstract is July 26, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Central Time.

A limited number of travel awards will be granted to authors of the highest-rated abstracts, as determined through the peer review process. Award recipients will be selected following the review process and notified directly.

Accomodations

Hotel Napoleon Memphis is the official hotel of 2026 Bringing Chemistry to Medicine. The deadline to reserve a room is August 31, 2026.

Room rate: $114 per night

Transportation will be provided via shuttle at the start of each day, and at the end to take guests to and from campus.

Book a room at Hotel Napoleon

Overview

Event: 6th annual Bringing Chemistry to Medicine Symposium

Date: October 1-2, 2026

Location:
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Virtual option available

Department hosts: Chemical Biology & Therapeutics and the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center

Event hosts:
Aseem Z. Ansari
Chair, Chemical Biology & Therapeutics
R. J. Ulrich Endowed Chair

Charles W. M. Roberts, MD, PhD
Executive Vice President
Director, Comprehensive Cancer Center

Mishtu Dey, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
Cell Chemical Biology
Cell Press

Lara Szewczak, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
Molecular Cell
Cell Press

Event contact:
Bringing Chemistry to Medicine planning committee
BC2M@stjude.org

Registration deadlines & fees

This symposium will be hosted in a hybrid format, giving you the option to attend in-person or virtually. Registration is free.

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.

Visit our video archive

View the 2025 Program

Past symposia

Name	Institution	Talk Title
Vadim Backman, PhD	Northwestern University	Chromatin-encoded cellular transcriptional memory in cancer
Steve Banik, PhD	Stanford University	Rewiring the mammalian interactome
Ibrahim Cissé, PhD	Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics	Super-resolution imaging of transcription in living cells
Jim Collins, PhD	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Deep learning for antibiotic discovery
Rong Fan, PhD	Yale School of Medicine	Ushering in a new era of human biology driven by novel spatial multi-omics
Eric Fischer, PhD	Dana-Farber Cancer Institute	Advances in the systematic discovery of molecular glue degraders
Anshul Kundaje, PhD	Stanford University	Deciphering regulatory syntax and genetic variation with deep learning models
Luke Lavis, PhD	Janelia Research Campus	Designing, synthesizing, and sharing next-generation fluorophores
Michael (Mike) Levine, PhD	Princeton University	3D genome and the control of gene expression in development
Elisa Oricchio, PhD	École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Harnessing cancer and immune cell communication to identify new therapeutic targets
Loic Royer, Dr. rer. nat	Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, San Francisco	Building a virtual embryo, one cell at a time
Paola Scaffidi, PhD	Instituto Europeo di Oncologia (European Institute of Oncology)	Network-level epigenetic alterations in cancer evolution
Brenda Schulman, PhD	Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital	Regulation by the ubiquitin-proteasome system
Yang Shi, PhD	Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, University of Oxford	Chromatin regulation and cancer
Christina Theodoris, MD, PhD	Gladstone Institutes	Transfer learning to enable predictions for network biology
Georgios Skiniotis, PhD	St. Jude Children's Research Hospital	Structural insights into calcium sensing receptor signaling; from mechanism to therapeutics
Angela Cacace, PhD	Arvinas	Breaking perceived drug discovery limits: PROTAC innovation advancements and future horizons in cancer and neuroscience
Tommaso Cupido, PhD	St. Jude Children's Research Hospital	Targeting DEAD-box ATPases by Trapping Inactive Conformational States with Small Molecule Inhibitors
Brendan Dwyer, PhD	Stanford University	Proteomic insights into mechanisms of transcriptional reprogramming molecular glues
Steven Knutson, PhD	Princeton University	Photocatalytic µMap poximity labeling of HER2 identifies functional interactors and trastuzmab resistance mechanisms
Nathaniel Mabe, PharmD, PhD	Purdue University	Destabilization of noncanonical PRC1 complexes via USP7 inhibition induces neuronal differentiation in neuroblastoma
Asad Taherbhoy	Foghorn Therapeutics, Inc	Structural and functional basis of PU.1-BAF interaction enables targeting of lineage-specific transcription
Rachel O'Rourke	University of Michigan	Unraveling the effects of eIF4E cap analogue inhibitors on cap-dependent translation to assess their therapeutic potential in cancer
Emilee Patterson	Vanderbilt University	Prediction of elicitor-regulator pairs to enable secondary metabolite discovery
Elizabeth Hillman	St. Jude Children's Research Hospital	Establishing a Department of Imaging Sciences

Name	Institution	Talk Title
Anna Mapp, PhD	University of Michigan	A General Strategy for Drugging Transcription Factors
Cheryl Arrowsmith, PhD	University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Cancer Center	Probing the human proteome for therapeutic opportunities
Chuan He, PhD	University of Chicago	RNA methylation in gene expression regulation
Emily Dykhuizen, PhD	Purdue University	Chemically Targeting Specific Chromatin Remodeling Subcomplexes in Cancer
Kevan Shokat, PhD	University of California, San Francisco	Overcoming the Undruggable Nature of The Most Common Human Oncogene K-Ras
Nada Jabado, PhD	Mcgill University	Oncohistones in Disease: From Cancer to...Beyond
P.S. Arora, PhD	New York University	Rational design to hijack transcriptional protein-protein interactions
Sara Buhrlage, PhD	Dana Farber Cancer Institute	Harnessing Deubiquitinases for Next-Generation Protein Stability Therapeutics
Tony Kouzarides, PhD, FMedSci, FRS	University of Cambridge	Targeting RNA Modifying Enzymes in the Treatment of Cancer
Gerald (Jerry) Crabtree, MD	Stanford University School of Medicine	Rewiring Cancer Drivers to Activate Apoptosis
Jay Bradner, MD		Gene Control Medicines
David Baker, PhD	University of Washington	Design of New Protein Function Using Deep Learning
Karen Adelman, PhD	Harvard University	Small Molecules inhibitors reveal direct targets of chromatin remodelers
Jun Qi, PhD	Dana Farber Cancer Institute	Drugging Transcription
Charles 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 Chapel Hill	Antagonist Development for Chromodomain-Helicase DNA-Binding Protein 1 (CHD1)
Joshua Gruber, MD, PhD	UT Southwestern Medical Center	Acetyl-Click Screening Platform Identifies Small-Molecule and Peptide-based Inhibitors of Histone Acetyltransferase 1 (HAT1)
Samantha Bevill, PhD	Dana Farber Cancer Institute	Impact of Supraphysiologic MDM2 Expression on P53Independent Chromatin Networks and Therapeutic Responses in Sarcoma
Deepak Nijhawan, MD, PhD	UT Southwestern Medical Center	Anticancer Benzoxaboroles Inhibit Pre-mRNA Processing by Direct Inhibition of CPSF3
Aseem Ansari, PhD	Chair, Department of Chemical Biology & Therapeutics St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital	Transcription Targeted Therapeutics
Drew Adams, PhD	Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine	Targeting the Chromatin-Binding of XPO1 Disrupts NFAT and T Cell Activation
Arabinda Chaudhuri, PhD	Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata	In Vivo Dendritic Cells Targeted DNA Vaccination in Combination with Tumor-Selective Chemotherapy Eradicates Established Mouse Melanoma
Gihoon Lee, PhD	Princeton University	Time-Resolved Protein Synthesis Reveals Distinct Phases of Oncogenic Signaling and Identifies the ‘Achilles Heel’ of a Liver Cancer FL-HCC

Name	Institution	Talk title
Scott Armstrong, MD, PhD	Dana-Farber Cancer Institute	Therapeutic Targeting of Chromatin Complexes in Cancer
Bradley Bernstein, MD, PhD	Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School , Broad Institute of Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Etiology and Impact of Methylation Changes in Cancer
Clifford Brangwynne, PhD	Princeton University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute	Intracellular Phase Transitions: The Fluidity of Biological Function
Jolanta Grembecka, PhD	University of Michigan	Therapeutic targeting of epigenetic modifiers in leukemia
Tanja Mittag, PhD	St. Jude Children's Research Hospital	Transcriptional Hubs or Condensates?
Fraydoon Rastinejad, PhD	Nuffield Department of Medicine	Visualizing Drug-Binding Pockets in Transcription Factors
Kenneth Zaret, PhD	Pennsylvania State University	Overcoming Chromatin Barriers for Transcription Therapies
Ray Deshaies, PhD	Amgen	The Awesome Power of Synthetic Organic Chemistry in Drug Development
Matt Disney, PhD	Scripps Research	Sequence-Based Design of Small Molecules Targeting RNA Structures to Manipulate and Study Disease Biology
Ron Dror, PhD	Stanford University	Molecular simulation and machine learning for the design of finely tuned drugs
Dorothee Kern, PhD	Brandeis University	Protein Dynamics at the Heart of New Cancer Drug Design Approaches
Judith Klinman, PhD	University of California, Berkeley	Integrating Protein Dynamics into Enzyme Function
David Moore, PhD	University of California, Berkeley	Regulation of Liver Energy Balance by Nutrient-sensing Nuclear Receptors
Peter Schultz, PhD	Scripps Research	A Chemist’s Foray into Translational Research
Derek Tan, PhD	Memorial Sloan Kettering	SEAKERs: Targeted Cellular Micropharmacies that Generate Small-Molecule Drugs in situ
Daniel Blair, PhD	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	Modularized Molecule Making

Name	Institution	Talk Title
M. Madan Babu, PhD, FRSC	St. Jude Children's Research Hospital	Variation in GPCR Signalling : Implications for drug discovery
Suzanne J. Baker, PhD	St. Jude Children's Research Hospital	Histone Mutations and Disrupted Development in Pediatric High-Grade Glioma
James E. Bradner, MD	Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR)	Chemical control of gene expression
Andrea Califano, PhD	JP Sulzberger Columbia Genome Center, Columbia University	Elucidation and Pharmacologic Targeting of Single Cell State Maintenance Mechanisms
Francesca Ciccarelli, PhD	King’s College London	Predictors of response to cancer immunotherapy: beyond Tumour Mutational Burden
Patrick Cramer, PhD	Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry	Recent insights into chromatin transcription
Craig M. Crews, PhD	Yale University	PROTAC-mediated Protein Degradation: A New Therapeutic Modality
Pedro R. Cutillas, PhD	Barts Cancer Institute and Queen Mary University of London	Rationalising anti-cancer drug responses using proteomics and machine learning: towards next generation precision medicine
Cigall Kadoch, PhD	Dana-Farber Cancer Institute	Structure and Function of Mammalian SWI/SNF Chromatin Remodeling Complexes in Human Cancer
William G. Kaelin, Jr, MD	Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute	Three Possible Paths to Targeting Undruggable Transcription Factors
Mitchell Lazar, MD, PhD	University of Pennsylvania Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism	Personalization of Transcriptional Therapy With Drugs Targeting Nuclear Receptors
Jonathan D. Licht, MD	University of Florida Health Cancer Center	NSDZ in lymphoid malignancy
Craig W. Lindsley, PhD	Vanderbilt University	Discovery and Development of GPCR Allosteric Ligands: From concept to clinic
Debora S. Marks, PhD	Harvard Medical School	Prediction and design of proteins with neural machines
Marvin J. Miller, PhD	University of Notre Dame	Design, Syntheses and Studies of New Antibiotics
Anjana Rao, PhD	La Jolla Institute for Immunology	Transcriptional networks in tumour-infiltrating T cells
Tobin R. Sosnick, PhD	University of Chicago	Prediction of a protein’s Free energy surface with validation using hydrogen/deuterium exchange
Professor Dame Janet Thornton	European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)	Computational Enzymology: The structure, function and evolution of enzymes

Name	Institution	Talk Title
Scott Blanchard	St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital	Bridging the Gap Between Biomolecular Structure and Function Through Single-Molecule Imaging
Richard Lee	St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital	Antibiotic Discovery at St. Jude
Jun Liu	Yale Schol of Medicine	Painting Chromatin with Synthetic Protein Chemistry
Angela Koehler	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Attenuating Oncogenic Transcription with Small Molecules
Taosheng Chen	St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital	Chemical Transcription Modulators of Promiscuous Xenobiotic Receptors
Shaomeng Wang	University of Michigan Medical School	Induced Protein Degradation as a Therapeutic Strategy
Marcus Fischer	St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital	Bridge Over Troubled Water Networks – Binding and Garfunkel
Ivet Bahar	University of Pittsburgh	Network Models in Biology: From Molecular Machinery to Chromosomal Dynamics, to Systems Pharmacology
Tarun Kapoor	The Rockefeller University	Chemical Biology of Drug Resistance
James Chen	Stanford University	Targeting Colorectal Cancer with Aldehyde Dehydrogenase Inhibitors
Zoran Rankovic	St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital	Targeted Protein Degradation Platform
Phil Chamberlain		History and Future of Thalidomide Analogs in Human Health
Anang Shelat and Phil Potter	St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital	Bromodomain-selective BETi as Pediatric Anticancer Agents
Tudor Moldoveanu	St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital	Probing the Mechanism of Mitochondrial Apoptosis Initiation

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

Bringing Chemistry to Medicine Symposium

About the symposium

2026 speakers

Abstracts

Accomodations

Overview

Registration deadlines & fees

Watch our archived lectures

Past symposia

2025

2023

2022

2021

2020

Transcription Therapy at St. Jude