The 21st Annual Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Michael Welsh, M.D., Carver Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, University of Iowa; investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, What Goes Wrong in CF and Can It Be Repaired?

Paul Negulescu, Ph.D., senior vice president, research, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, From Concept to Medicines that Treat CF

Sabine Hadida, Ph.D., senior vice president, site head, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Bending the Rules of Medicinal Chemistry to Fix CFTR

Fredrick Van Goor, Ph.D., vice president of cystic fibrosis research, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Reaching All People with CF: CFTR Modulators and Beyond

Event URL

https://go.rockefeller.edu/FLS_WileyPrize2023

Event password

460700

Speaker bio(s)

Dr. Michael Welsh is the Carver Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Iowa.  He directs the Pappajohn Biomedical Institute. 

He received the Distinguished Mentor Award of the Carver College of Medicine.  He served as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Sciences.  Recent honors are the Warren Alpert Prize, the Kober Medal, and the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine.

Paul is a Senior Vice President of Research at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where he is currently Disease Area Executive for Vertex’s Pain Program.  From 2003-2022 Paul was Site Head for Vertex’s San Diego Research Site. During that time, the team discovered the first CFTR modulators approved for the treatment of cystic fibrosis. Paul also led Vertex research efforts to discover selective inhibitors of voltage-gated sodium channels for the treatment of pain.

Prior to Vertex, Paul was Senior Vice President of Aurora Biosciences, whose founders included Roger Tsien. Paul joined as one of the first employees. When Vertex acquired Aurora in 2001, Paul was responsible for integrating Aurora’s research, including the CF and pain programs, to Vertex. 

Paul received both his B.S. and Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in Physiology and carried out post-doctoral work at U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Irvine in epithelial biology, biophysics and immunology.

Paul was co-recipient of the 2018 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize and the 2022 Shaw Prize in Life Sciences and Medicine for his role in the discovery of medicines to treat cystic fibrosis.

Sabine Hadida, Ph.D., is a Senior Vice President and the Site Head at Vertex in San Diego.

Since joining Vertex in 2002, Dr. Hadida has led the company’s chemistry team that is working in cystic fibrosis (CF) and pain. During that time, the team has discovered the now-approved medicines, KALYDECO, ORKAMBI, SYMDEKO and TRIKAFTA as well as multiple medicines in pre-clinical and clinical development. In June 2022, Dr. Hadida transitioned to lead the San Diego site.

Previously, Dr. Hadida held a research scientist position at Combichem, Inc. in San Diego, which later was bought by DuPont Pharmaceuticals, Bristol Myers-Squibb, and Deltagen Research Laboratories.

Dr. Hadida received her Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD in Pharmacy from the University of Barcelona, Spain. Additionally, she spent two years conducting postdoctoral research on fluorous chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Hadida has published over 30 peer reviewed papers and is inventor of over 60 U.S. patents. She received several scientific awards, most recently the 2022 MCBD Drug Hunter Award, the 2019 Distinguished Scientist Award by the American Chemistry Society, San Diego Chapter, and the 2013 ACS Heroes of Chemistry award by the American Chemistry Society for excellence in innovation and success in Vertex’s development of KALYDECO. Sabine also received the Vertex Platinum Research Award and the Vertex Palladium Leadership Award.

Fredrick Van Goor, Ph.D., leads Cystic Fibrosis (CF) research for Vertex Pharmaceuticals.  In this role, he works with the CF Disease Area Team to drive the company’s research, clinical, regulatory and commercial strategy and execution. Dr. Van Goor led the biology effort for the team that discovered and developed Kalydeco, Orkambi, Symdeko, and Trikafta – Vertex’s four approved small molecule medicines that treat the underlying cause of disease in up to 90% of people with CF.  Currently, he is leading Vertex’s collaboration with Moderna to discover novel CFTR mRNA therapies for the treatment of CF. To date, the collaboration has led to the discovery of VX-522, which is in early stage clinical studies in people with CF.  Prior to joining Vertex in 2001, Dr. Van Goor was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Van Goor has over 20 US patents in the areas of CF and technology development and has published six book chapters in the areas of CF, ion channel drug discovery and endocrinology and authored more than 50 research articles in peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. Dr. Van Goor received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Alberta, Canada.

Open to

Public

Reception

Refreshments, 10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m., Abby Reception Hall

Contact

Brandon Fleischer

Phone

(212) 327-8689

Sponsor

Brandon Fleischer
(212) 327-8689
bfleischer@rockefeller.edu