May 10, 2023

William F. DeGrado, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF, where he is also a member of the Cardiovascular Research Institute. Before joining UCSF in 2011, he was a member of DuPont Central Research and DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company and the George W. Raiziss Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. DeGrado is a member of the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and past President of the Protein Society.

Dr. DeGrado’s research interests include de novo design of proteins and peptides; peptide mimetics; structure/function of membrane proteins, including integrins and viral ion channels; small molecule drug design; and bioinorganic chemistry. He was the first to successfully design and construct a protein “from scratch” and pioneered the design of peptides that not only fold into protein-like structures but also incorporate desired functionalities.

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Dr. DeGrado graduated from Kalamazoo College and holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago. He joined the DuPont Central Research without an intervening postdoctoral position.

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Changjoon Justin Lee is a neuroscientist specializing in the field of glioscience. He served as the Director of Center for Neuroscience at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology and later founded the WCI Center for Functional Connectomics as part of the World Class Institute Program. In 2015, he established the Center for Glia-Neuron Interaction before becoming co-director of the IBS Center for Cognition and Sociality and head of the Cognitive Glioscience Group in 2018. He has been on the editorial boards of the journals Molecular Brain and Molecular Pain and is a chief editor of Experimental Neurobiology.

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In November 2018, Lee joined the IBS Center for Cognition and Sociality as a co-director with Shin Hee-sup, who he had previously met and worked with at KIST. Shin led the Social Neuroscience Group until his retirement in 2020 while Lee leads the Cognitive Glioscience Group which focuses on four research areas: molecular glioscience, glia-neuron interaction, glial plasticity and cognition, and gliopathy.

Lee's research group has contributed to the field of gliotransmission by creating several seminal publications on the channel-mediated gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate release from astrocytes. They later identified the biosynthetic pathway for astrocyte GABA and found monoamine oxidase B to be the key enzyme for GABA production which raised the possibility that astrocytes can directly participate in cognitive processes via astrocytic GABA.

His team also found a connection with GABA from reactive astrocytes and impaired memory in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, leading them to propose astrocytic GABA might be a diagnostic tool, biomarker, and therapeutic target for both neurological diseases Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The research is notable as it revealed that astrocytes, like neurons, play a significant role in cognitive processes. The findings also resulted in a technology transfer to MegaBioWood which will be prepared for a phase I clinical trial in 2019. In response to his Alzheimer's research related to causes of memory loss, Lee received the Science Day 2017 Presidential Medal of Honor.

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Dr. Carlo Condello is an Associate Professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology and the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (IND). He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, TX, and his PhD from Northwestern University (Chicago, IL) where he used novel optical imaging approaches and animal models to study the kinetics and toxicity of β-amyloid deposition and the role of microglia in Alzheimer's disease (AD) with Dr. Jaime Grutzendler. Following graduation, the lab moved to Yale University, where Dr. Condello completed a project related to his thesis as a postdoctoral fellow.

As a postdoc with Dr. Stanley Prusiner at UCSF, he developed several novel optical imaging tools, including noninvasive in vivo methods employing a bioluminescent genetic reporter of astrocytosis or near-infrared amyloid-binding dyes to monitor disease progression and therapeutic intervention in mouse models of AD, tauopathy, and prion disease. In collaboration with protein chemists, he developed a new technique using confocal spectral imaging and environment-sensitive probes to decipher and catalog conformational variants (“strains”) of Aβ and tau deposits in the brains of AD patients and transgenic rodent models, which may have implications for developing more informative molecular diagnostics and strain-specific therapeutics. Dr. Condello continued these studies as a Group Leader (adjunct faculty) in the IND, where he led a team of scientists in developing new rodent models and human cell assays to study prion biology, neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation in vivo. Notably, he also directed collaborations with drug discovery scientists at the IND to discover new approaches to slowing prion propagation and neuropathology.

Now in his own independent lab, Dr. Condello’s research program aims to elucidate molecular pathways in microglia that govern protein aggregation and neurodegeneration using in vivo rodent models and human cultured cells. His lab is also keen to understand how genetic risk factors expressed by microglia augment conformational heterogeneity of amyloids and associated pathobiological mechanisms that lead to formation or clearance of specific strains. To address these important topics, the Condello lab is implementing a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach that spans advanced optical imaging, cell and molecular neuroscience, biophysics, and chemical biology methods.

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Dr. Mark was the Senior Vice President and Global Head of CardioMetabolic Diseases Research at Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany. In this role, he was responsible for the  research and development of innovative treatments for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity, NASH and diabetic microvascular complications like eye diseases as well as kidney diseases. Furthermore, he gained insights and hands on experience in the broad field of cardiovascular diseases at large as well as thromboembolic diseases.

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He has more than 35 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Early in his career, Dr Mark contributed to the discovery and development of repaglinide, an approved treatment of type 2 diabetes. He pioneered the discovery of the DPP-4 inhibitor linagliptin (Trajenta) and was instrumental in the initiation of the preclinical work for the SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin (Jardiance), both compounds globally launched and marketed. Together with his team he developed a competitive portfolio for cardiometabolic treatment options with various preclinical and several clinical developments projects currently ongoing. Dr Mark served over 6 years as Project Co-ordinator for SUMMIT, an Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI)-sponsored European consortium of 19 academic centers and six major pharmaceutical partners, which aimed and succeeded to identify and characterize novel biomarkers and genetic markers for diabetic complications. Dr Mark authored many peer-reviewed publications and meeting contributions and also various book chapters. In addition he holds numerous patents.

After retirement end of 2019 Michael Mark is acting as consultant to several biotech as well as larger pharma companies worldwide for the discovery and developmental aspects of multiple projects.

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Yong Ho Kim, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology (SAINT) & Department of Nano Engineering at the Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). He earned his Ph.D in Department of Chemistry at University of Pennsylvania in 2011, and completed post-doctoral fellowship at M.I.T. in 2013. Dr. Kim is a co-founder of IMNEWRUN Inc. and currently serves as advisor of generative biology.

Dr. Kim’s research mainly includes de novo protein design which has been historically used to validate the principles governing the process of biomolecular folding and assembly. Dr. Kim develops protein-design based on computational modeling to successfully engineer a series of hybrid structures composed of carbon-based nanomaterials and artificial proteins. In addition, his approach describes general rules for designing peptides that recognize surface lattices and further self-associate to achieve superstructure which is a major progress in the field of nano-assembly. This novel methodology for the construction of nano-bio hybrid materials suggest a promising role for proteins in nanomaterials technology. 

Dr. Kim also pursues on developing methods for top-down templating of assembled structures of protein and DNA molecules. In this work, the arrangement of biomolecules on a surface is guided by lithographically patterned features. This approach combines the fast deposition of information into materials that can be accomplished with lithography with the wealth of molecular diversity and complexity that can be accessed using organic chemistry and modern molecular biology.

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