Benjamin Schumann, Imperial College London and the Francis Crick Institute, United Kingdom
Dr Benjamin Schumann studied biochemistry in Tübingen, where he gained an early appreciation for the power of chemistry to unravel biological processes. He added a keen interest in glycosciences during undergraduate work with Ten Feizi and during his PhD with Peter H Seeberger at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and Potsdam. There, he synthesised oligosaccharides as vaccine candidates against pathogenic bacteria, applying his own compounds in vivo and in vitro.
Ben moved to Stanford University to work with Carolyn R Bertozzi as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Feodor Lynen Fellow. There, he learned how bioorthogonal sugars can be applied to address questions in modern, quantitative biology. He moved to London in 2018 to start his independent career as a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London.
Ben’s team uses bioorthogonal chemistry to make tools that are helping us to understand sugars. They develop molecules that tell us exactly how the sugar-building enzymes work – what they do and which sugars they build – out of the millions of structures that are found on a cell at any given point in time. Since many of these enzymes are important in diseases, such as neuronal disorders or cancer, the team’s chemical tools are a promising means of understanding what goes wrong in such conditions.
Angela Russell, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Angela Russell gained her DPhil in organic chemistry in 2004 under the joint supervision of Steve Davies and Tim Perera from Yamanouchi plc (now Astellas Pharma Inc.). In 2007, she was awarded a prestigious Research Council UK Fellowship in Medicinal Chemistry. In 2012, she became an Associate Professor, and in 2018, she was promoted to Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, a position she holds jointly between the Departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Oxford.
Her research concerns the discovery and translation of new molecules and mechanisms to manipulate cell fate, particularly for degenerative diseases. To achieve this, she has realised several successful multidisciplinary research collaborations, including identifying small molecules to upregulate utrophin for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and developing novel inhibitors and activators of developmental signalling pathways and new anti-cancer agents.
Angela has published over 130 original articles, book chapters and patent applications. She has founded three companies: MuOx Ltd in 2012 (acquired by Summit Therapeutics plc), Oxstem Ltd in 2016 and Kodiform Therapeutics Ltd in 2024 to translate her research towards new treatments. She has also been involved in taking two products to clinical trial, one in DMD and the other in COVID-19.
In 2016, Angela was named a ‘Rising Star’ in the ‘BioBeat 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness 2016’ report. Released annually, the report celebrates 50 outstanding women entrepreneurs and business leaders who are recognised for their contributions to global health innovation. In 2020, she received a Harrington Rare Diseases scholarship award in recognition of her pioneering work to develop a therapy for DMD.
Peter Seeberger, Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany
Peter H Seeberger was a tenured professor at MIT and ETH Zürich before becoming Director at the Max-Planck Institute in Potsdam in 2009. Since 2021, has been Vice President of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and, since 2023, Founding Director of the Center for the Transformation of Chemistry (CTC), which received initial funding of €1.25 billion.
Peter’s research spans engineering to immunology and has been documented in over 670 journal articles and more than 60 patent families. His research has also received over 40 international awards. Peter supports open access publishing and is Editor-in-Chief of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. He is a co-founder of several successful companies as well as the Tesfa-Ilg Foundation, which works in Ethiopia.
Miles Congreve, Isomorphic Labs, United Kingdom
Dr. Congreve joined Isomorphic Labs in May 2022 as Chief Scientific Officer where he is responsible for the drug discovery portfolio. He was previously CSO at Sosei Heptares (NxEra, Cambridge UK, 2008-2022). Earlier in his career, he worked at Astex Therapeutics (2001-2008) and GSK (1993-2001).
Dr. Congreve is a recognised expert in Structure and Fragment-Based Drug Design (SBDD, FBDD) with >200 publications and >80 lectures at scientific meetings. He has participated in the discovery of 28 agents that have progressed into clinical trials including three marketed drugs. He is co-inventor of Ribociclib (Kisqali®), which received FDA approval as first-line treatment for HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer in combination with an aromatase inhibitor, in March 2017.
Dr. Congreve was co-recipient of the UUÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize for GPCR drug discovery research at Heptares (2015). He teaches at the Drew Medicinal Chemistry School (ResMed) in the USA and serves on the editorial advisory board for the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Dr Congreve did his first degree in biological chemistry at Leicester University and then a PhD at Cambridge University in marine natural product synthesis.
