Prof Stefan Knapp
Email: knapp (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29871

Stefan studied Chemistry at the University of Marburg (Germany) and at the University of Illinois (USA). He did his PhD in protein crystallography at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) (1996) and continued his career at the Karolinska Institute as a postdoctoral scientist (1996-1999). In 1999, he joined the Pharmacia Corporation as a principal research scientist in structural biology and biophysics. He left the company in 2004 to set up a research group at the Structural Genomics Consortium at Oxford University (SGC). From 2008 to 2015 he was a Professor of Structural Biology at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine (NDM) at Oxford University (UK) and between 2012 and 2015 he was the Director for Chemical Biology at the Target Discovery Institute (TDI). He joined Frankfurt University (Germany) in 2015 as a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Buchmann Institute of Molecular Life Sciences. He remains associated to the SGC as a visiting Professor at Oxford and he is also adjunct Professor of the George Washington University. Since 2017 he is the CSO of the newly founded SGC node at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. His research interests are the rational design of selective inhibitors that target protein kinases as well as protein interactions modules that function as reader domains of the epigenetic code.

Susanne Müller-Knapp
Email: susanne.mueller-knapp (at) bmls.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42535

Knapp studied Human Biology in Marburg Germany followed by a PhD in molecular biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden (1997). She then had more than 6 years of postdoctoral training in the area of inflammation and gene regulation at the Karolinska Institute and at the DIBIT San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy.
In 2004 Susanne joined the Structural Genomics Consortium, SGC, in Oxford. The SGC is an international public private partnership that currently comprises 8 international pharmaceutical companies and a large network of academic and industrial collaborators. Susanne worked at the SGC first as External Research Manager and then Scientific Coordinator. She has been the Project Manager of the Epigenetic Probe Project, which generates tool compounds with defined specificity and selectivity for epigenetic targets and the cell based assay group at the SGC in Oxford testing the cellular activity of the in vitro characterised tool compounds. In her role as Chief Operating Officer at the SGC Frankfurt Susanne is now coordinating several probe programs including the global SGC kinase chemical probe program and the donated probe program, which makes probes available from the pharmaceutical partners of the SGC.

Florian Born
Email: f.born (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29800

To Dinh Nguyen Ngu
Email: To (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de

In December 2020 To Dinh Nguyen Ngu joined Prof. Knapp's group as technical assistance.

Dimitrios-Ilias Balourdas
Email: Balourdas (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29307

Dimitrios-Ilias Balourdas obtained his Pharmacy diploma degree from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2019. He completed his MSc dissertation at Goethe University Frankfurt in the group of Prof. Stefan Knapp, within the framework of the Erasmus+ program. His work focused on the characterization of dual BET/HDAC inhibitors for the treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Later in 2019, he was awarded a DAAD research grant to establish a collaboration project between Prof. Vassilis Gorgoulis (Athens) and Prof. Stefan Knapp to elucidate the function of CDC6, a novel drug target involved in carcinogenesis and cellular senescence. In August 2020, Ilias has joined the SGC Frankfurt as a PhD student working on targeting transcription factors, initially funded by a Buchmann fellowship.

Ralf Braden
Email: braden (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29315

Ralf Braden started his training as chemical lab technician in 1985 at the Hoechst AG in Frankfurt. In the following 30 years, after finishing his apprenticeship, he worked for Hoechst AG, Trevira, Clariant, WeylChem and Samsung. In 2015 he joined the Group of Stefan Knapp at Goethe University.

Verena Dederer
Email: Dederer (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42524

Verena received her Diploma in technical biology from the University of Stuttgart. She completed her thesis with Prof. Daniel Finley at Harvard Medical School on the topic of protein degradation during erythropoiesis. After that, Verena pursued her PhD at University of Heidelberg studying the cellular function of intramembrane proteases and AAA-ATPases and their role in membrane protein homeostasis. Verena joined the group of Prof. Stefan Knapp in January 2021 as a post-doc to study protein kinases related to Parkinson’s disease.

Johannes Dopfer
Email: dopfer (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42503

Theresa Ehret
Email: ehret (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42422

Theresa Ehret pursued a degree in Pharmacy at Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg. During her studies, she embarked on a six-month internship in the pharmaceutical development department at medac GmbH. After earning her degree in January 2020, she launched her career as a junior life science consultant, specializing in GxP and software validation. In February 2022, Theresa began her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Stefan Knapp, conducting research as part of the SGC Frankfurt and EUbOPEN consortium. Her work revolves around compound-target engagement projects and their validation in cells.

Lewis Elson

Lewis Elson graduated with a Master’s degree in Molecular Cell Biology from Nottingham Trent University in 2018 where the research topic of his thesis was determining the effect of acetylation on the de novo methyltransferases DNMT3A and DNMT3B. Following graduation, he was employed at the contract research organisation Covance within Safety Assessment Toxicology. His duties involved study coordination and assessing the toxicological profiles of potential pharmaceuticals in both primate and rodent models. Lewis joined SGC Frankfurt in December of 2020 as a Technical Assistant for the Cellular Assays working group.

Frederic Farges
Email: farges (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-

Joshua Gerninghaus
Email: gerninghaus (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29313

Joshua Gerninghaus studied pharmacy at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. After finishing his studies he worked on CK2 inhibitors in Knapp Group for six months before graduating with pharmacy state examination in December 2019. In February 2020 he started his PhD. The current focus of his work is on development of selective macrocyclic kinase inhibitors.

Francesco Aleksy Greco
Email: greco (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29313

Francesco Aleksy Greco studied pharmacy at the Goethe University of Frankfurt. After graduating in 2018 he worked 6 months on CLK inhibitors in Stefan Knapps group. He eventually joined the group as a PhD student in February 2019. The current topic of interest is the development of allosteric kinase inhibitors.

Adrian Haag
Email: Haag (at) chemie.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29385

Hanna Holzmann
Email: h.holzmannn (at) em.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42524

Hanna Holzmann finished her Abitur in 2021 and her training as a chemical-technical assistant at the Ludwig-Geissler School in Hanau in 2022. She then started studying Biosiences at the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences and joined the working group of Prof. Dr. Stefan Knapp in September 2023 as a laboratory manager.

Sandra Häberle
Email: haeberle (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel:

Sandra Häberle studied bioinformatics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 2016, she completed her PhD at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, where she was involved in the development of new techniques for the biochemical analysis of inhibitors in the field of allergic and inflammatory reactions. She then joined the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS) - a pan-European organization that promotes excellence in pharmaceutical sciences and innovative drug research in Europe - as Secretary General. In June 2022, Sandra joined the research group of Prof. Stefan Knapp as project coordinator.

Anton Ruben Hamann
Email: hamann (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de

Tel:

Thomas Hanke
Email: hanke (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29313

Thomas Hanke studied Pharmacy at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 2014, he completed his PhD in the field of pharmaceutical chemistry, investigating the synthesis and pharmacological characterization of dual 5-lipoxygenase and microsomal prostaglandin E2 synthase-1 inhibitors as a new alternative strategy for anti-inflammatory drugs. In 2015, he joined Stefan Knapp´s group where he is working on the development of chemical probes for targeting kinases. For that, he is pursuing different strategies, including the synthesis of allosteric kinase inhibitors (e.g. for LIMK1/2) and the synthesis of macrocyclic compounds to generate new chemistry for targeting kinases.

Lasse Hoffmann
Email: La.Hoffmann (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29800

Andreas C. Joerger
Email: joerger (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29875

Andreas C. Joerger obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg, Germany in 2000 for elucidating the reaction mechanism and structural basis of substrate specificity of a zinc-dependent aldolase. He then assumed a postdoc position in the group of Prof. Sir Alan Fersht at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Protein Engineering in Cambridge, United Kingdom, initially working on protein design. He stayed on as a senior scientist in structural biology until 2010, before moving to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (2010-2015). During his long spell at the MRC, he made key contributions towards unraveling the complex structural biology of the tumor suppressor p53 and related proteins. He determined the first crystal structures of p53 cancer mutants, which led to the Y220C mutant being used as a paradigm for the development of mutant p53 rescue drugs based on protein stabilization. In 2016, Dr. Joerger joined the group of Prof. Stefan Knapp at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. He is currently a German Research Foundation (DFG)-funded project leader on targeting the p53 mutome for cancer therapy; and co-investigator on a grant from Worldwide Cancer Research for the development of Y220C mutant stabilizers. His other research interests include the evolutionary history of the p53 pathway, epigenetic targets and general principles of molecular interactions.

Yeojin Kim
Email: kim (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29307

Yeojin Kim worked for Hanmi pharmaceutical company in South Korea for two years focusing on a development of new bio-drugs for autoimmune diseases and diabetes. In 2020, she moved to Germany to study Biochemistry and she received her MSc in Biochemistry at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in 2022. For her master thesis, she joined Universitätsklinikum Bonn, Institute of Structural Biology (Privatdozent Dr. Gregor Hagelüken) in Bonn and worked to figure out structural mechanism of tripartite ATP-independent periplasmic (TRAP) transporters in bacteria to give a cornerstone to anti-biotics discovery. In December 2022, she has joined the SGC Frankfurt (Prof. Stefan Knapp) as a PhD student working on the structure-based development of novel PROTACs targeting kinases and E3 ubiquitin ligases for the treatment of cancer and various diseases.

Andreas Krämer
Email: kraemer (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29875

Andreas Krämer graduated with a diploma in Chemistry from the University of Freiburg in 2012. During his PhD thesis at the University of Darmstadt (2013-2017), he focused on structural studies of bacterial members of the histone deacetylase superfamily (HDAC). After completing his PhD, he joined the group of Stefan Knapp at the SGC Frankfurt as a postdoc. He is currently funded by the Wellcome Trust, working on the structure-based development of selective and potent CaMK1D kinase inhibitors for the treatment of highly aggressive subtypes of breast cancer.

Adarsh Kumar
Email: Kumar (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29307

Adarsh Kumar received his Master's degree in Biotechnology-Bioinformatics from SRM University, Chennai, India. He later completed his doctoral thesis on hypothetical essential protein from Mycobacterium tuberculosis with emphasis on structural biology from CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, India. He then moved to The Florida State University as a postdoc and worked on the time-resolved structures and mechanisms in human DNA polymerase beta. He joined Prof. Knapp's group as a postdoc in 2022. He is currently involved in structural studies of multiple protein-ligand complexes.

Christopher Lenz
Email: Lenz (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42510

Christopher Lenz completed his bachelor degree in Biology at TU Darmstadt in 2019. During his bachelor thesis he focused on metabolic engineering of cyanobacteria using biotechnological approaches. He then continued with his master studies at the same University, focusing on Molecular and Synthetic Biology. In 2021, he joined Merck Healthcare KGaA for a three-month internship and his master thesis in the area of biophysics at the Department of Molecular Pharmacology. There, he specifically focused on analysing and evaluating the interaction of small molecule compounds with proteins as well as the effect of divalent metal ions on different compounds using various biophysical methods like SPR, ITC and nanoDSF. After completing his master degree in 2022, he continued with his PhD thesis at Professor Knapp’s lab, working on structural and functional studies of E3-Ligases.

Aleksandar Lucic
Email: a.lucic (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29496

Sebastian Mathea
Email: mathea (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42707

Sebastian obtained his PhD for his work on prolyl isomerases at the Max Planck Institute in Halle. As a postdoc, he joined the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) in Oxford where he solved several structures of protein kinases. In 2017, he moved to Frankfurt University to work as the pipeline team leader for protein production - structure elucidation - inhibitor screening.

Theresa Mensing
Email: mensing (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29874

Theresa Mensing studied Pharmacy at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Before graduating in June 2020 she worked in Stefan Knapps group for six month, dealing with the synthesis of macrocyclic protein kinase inhibitors. Since she started her PhD in June 2020 her current research is focused on affecting the selectivity profile of unselective inhibitors.

Nebojsa Miletic
Email: miletic (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29496

Nebojsa Miletic graduated with a master´s degree in chemistry at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 2019. During his master thesis, he worked on the development of pVHL-based PROTACs targeting BRD-containing chromatin remodelling complexes BAF and PBAF for degradation. He joined the group of Prof. Knapp as a PhD student in February 2020 and currently focuses on exploring new ubiquitin E3 ligases fort he development of PROTACs.

Mohit Misra
Email: mohitmisra21 (at) gmail.com
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42707

Mohit obtained his Master's in Biotechnology in New Delhi and a PG diploma in Bioinformatics ‘A’ level. He worked as a Junior Research Fellow at the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in the Recombinant Gene Products lab led by Dr. Navin Khanna. He moved to Germany to pursue his PhD in the lab of Prof. Hermann Schindelin where he worked at the apex of the ubiquitylation pathway exploring the structure-function relationship of the ubiquitin-activating enzyme (Uba1) and its interactions with multiple E2 enzymes. In addition, he established the structural basis of the variable potency of adenosyl sulfamate inhibitors towards Uba1 which hold promise for cancer therapy. After a brief postdoc in Würzburg, Mohit moved to Frankfurt to join the Dikic lab to pursue his fascination for novel chemistry of ubiquitylation discovered in Legionella. In May 2020, Mohit started team leader position in conjunction with EUbOPEN IMI/ SGC Frankfurt to target the ubiquitin system with new probes in order to develop therapeutics for human diseases.

Václav Němec
Email: nemec (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29914

Václav Němec studied Chemistry (BSc.) and later on also Organic Chemistry (MSc. and PhD.) at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. During his studies in Brno he was involved in several med-chem and chemical biology projects focusing for instance on development of novel kinase inhibitors (CLKs, CK1, ALKs) or inhibitors of Hedgehog signaling. He has spent 7 months in Manchester (UK) on a research stay in laboratories of Prof. David Procter, where he was working on the synthesis of natural product Phaeocaulising based on SmI₂ mediated radical cascade reaction. Owing to Jean Marie Lehn scholarship, he spent also one month at EICB Bordeaux (France) in the research group of Prof. Frédéric Friscourt, where he was working on a chemo-enzymatic synthesis of poly-LacNAc chains for binding and study of lectins. In September 2020 he has joined the SGC node at Goethe University in Frankfurt where he is working on development of novel PROTACs and establishment of chemogenomic library.

Yufeng Pan
Email: pan (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-

Yufeng obtained her master's degree at CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science in 2017, where her major was Biochemistry and Biology, and her research mainly focused on the mechanistic study of plant growth promoting rhizobacterium and DNA methylation. She then applied for MPIMP-IMPRS and became a PhD student at Potsdam University / MPIMP in 09.2017, her PhD research projects mainly focused on Plant Epigenetics and Stress Adaptation. From 02.2023, she joined Stefan Knapp's group as a postdoc and works on "Non-Hormonal Contraceptive Target-Enabling Packages (TEPs) for drug Discovery".

David Plano
Email: plano (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42422

David Plano completed his pharmacy studies at Goethe University Frankfurt in 2020. He did his practical year as a pharmacist and since November 2020 he joined the SGC Frankfurt in the group of Prof. Stefan Knapp in the Cellular Assay Working Group. He focuses his research on discovering the biology of the protein kinases MST1/2/3/4 and specifically on defining their involvement in the Hippo-Pathway using cellular techniques.

Nicolai Raig
Email: raig (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29874

Nicolai graduated with a Master's degree in Buisiness Chemistry at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel in 2020. During his master thesis at the SGC site of Frankfurt he synthesized macrocyclic kinase inhibitors. Afterwards Nicolai began his PhD in January 2021 in the working group of Prof. Knapp. His current scientific focus is on developing kinase inhibitors for Parkinson's disease research.

Vladimir Rogov
Email: rogov (at) bpc.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29622

Vladimir Rogov obtained his PhD in thermodynamics of protein folding and protein-protein interactions at the Institute of Protein Research, Pushchino, Russia, in the lab of Peter Privalov (1995). He continued his career as a senior scientist at the same institute and as a visiting researcher at University of Frankfurt, Germany (lab of Heinz Rüterjans, 1997-2004). He joined the lab of Volker Dötsch at the Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in 2004. Since 2010 Vladimir leads a research group studying protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions across autophagy and ubiquitination pathways. His main research interests include the characterization of affinity, specificity and driving forces of interactions between human autophagy modifiers (LC3/GABARAP proteins) and a broad spectrum of LIR-containing proteins/peptides by several biophysical and biochemical methods, as well as structural aspects of these interactions. He is also focused on molecular mechanisms of enhancing/reducing of the interactions affinity and specificity by post-translational modifications.

Sandra Röhm
Email: roehm (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29317

Sandra studied Biomedicinal Chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University and Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. For her scientific achievements in the field of Chemistry, she was awarded with the Adolf Todt prize from the University of Mainz. In 2015 she joined Prof. Stefan Knapp‘s group and the Structural Genomics Consortium in Frankfurt. During her Ph.D. studies, she successfully developed chemical probes targeting the mitogen activated protein kinase p38 and the discoidin domain receptor kinase. From 2020 she continued as a Postdoc and worked on kinase inhibitors for Parkinson's disease. As leader of WP2 in the EUbOPEN Consortium, she is coordinating the effort to generate a chemogenomic compound library. Together with her team, her current research interests focus on the design of covalent and allosteric inhibitors with structural novelties.

Krishna Saxena
Email: saxena (at) em.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42701

Krishna Saxena joined the SGC Frankfurt July 2020. Krishna studied Biochemistry in Frankfurt (Germany) followed by a PhD (1999) in heterologous expression of membrane proteins at the Institute of Biochemistry (Frankfurt). Then, he was leading a molecular biology and protein expression group for a collaboration between Aventis Research & Technologies and the Goethe University (1999-2001), later MRPharm (2001-2002), a biotechnology company spin out of Frankfurt University and shortly part of Affinium Pharmaceuticals. The focus of his work became structure-based drug discovery by NMR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. From 2003-2011, he was working as a group leader (collaboration Sanofi and Goethe University) to study the family of protein kinases and subsequently to investigate biomedically relevant protein-protein interactions (PPIs) with focus on the modulation of such interactions by low molecular weight ligands guided by NMR technology. Since 2012, he has worked in the drug development platform at the DKTK German Cancer Consortium and for several industrial collaborations.

Natalie Schneider
Email: natalie.schneider (at) bio.uni-frankfurt.de

Natalie studied chemistry at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany) and received her Ph.D in Biochemistry from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1999 with her work carried out at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Cell Biology. After postdoctoral research in the area of cell biology at the University of Tokyo (Japan, JSPS fellowship) and the University of Wisconsin - Madison (USA) Natalie moved back to Japan in 2002 to work on heart muscle simulation at Kyoto University. In 2012 she recieved a Master in Computer Science from the University of Advanced Sciences Trier (Germany) with her master thesis done at the Philips Research Laboratories in Aachen. Then she developed software for doctors at CompuGroup Medical in Koblenz. Since August 2017 Natalie works for the SGC Frankfurt where she is mainly responsible for the donated chemical probes website.

Saran Aswathaman Sivashanmugam
Email: AswathamanSivashanmugam (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42xxx

Martina Scholz
Email: scholz (at) iap.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29303

Martina is managing the office of Stefan Knapp’s group. She did her education in Frankfurt as technic assistant. In the past she was working long years for a plant engineering company in Frankfurt in the IT department for procurement and cost controlling.

Martin Schwalm
Email: schwalm (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42422

Martin Schwalm received his MSc in molecular Biotechnology at the Johann-Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt in 2020. For his Master thesis, he joined the Max-Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology (Prof. Dr. Tobias Erb) in Marburg and worked in the field of synthetic metabolism and directed evolution. In october 2020, he started his PhD working in the group of Prof. Dr.Stefan Knapp participating in the SGC Frankfurt and the EUbOPEN consortium. His research interest covers a broad spectrum of topics from drug screening to synthetic biology.

Maria Trallero
Email: maria.trallero(at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42507

Claudia Tredup
Email: tredup (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29401

Claudia Tredup studied Biology in Mainz, Germany followed by a PhD in Biochemistry at Christian- Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany. After her postdoc (2013-2014) working on proteolytic en-zymes she moved in 2015 to Frankfurt to investigate the role of proteoglycans in inflammation, innate immunity and renal fibrosis at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Goethe University. In September 2018, she joined the SGC Frankfurt as scientific manager.

Guiqun Wang
Email: wang (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29307

Guiqun Wang obtained his Master's degree from Jilin University in 2017. Then he spent two years of work in the industry, during his time in Amgen R&D center of Asia, his works focus on GPCR Drug discovery, to develop nanobody as agonist and antagonist, while he’s working at Chempartner, he made a major contribution to the discovery of a novel PD-1 antibody which was getting into clinical trial by the FDA later on. In 2020, after he spent one year of PhD research on the cryo-EM structure of NMDA receptors at Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, he turned to join Prof. Stefan Knapp’s group and became a PhD student focused on the research of covalent inhibitors targeting kinases and E3 ubiquitin ligases.

Athina Zerva
Email: zerva (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29385

Athina Zerva graduated with a master´s degree in chemistry at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 2022. During her master thesis she worked on the design and synthesis of bosutinib inspired macrocyclic kinase inhibitors. In January 2023, she joined the group of Prof. Knapp as a PhD student, focusing on exploring novel macrocyclic scaffolds for kinase inhibitor discovery.

Rezart Zhubi
Email: zhubi (at) pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-29307

Rezart Zhubi obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Tirana (Albania) in 2016. In 2018, he has started his Master's studies at Justus-Liebig University (Giessen) in the field of Agrobiotechnology. From November 2019 to February 2020, he worked in Natural product Discovery in the department of Insect Biotechnology and Bio-resources, in which he participated in a project that focuses on the study of Darobactin, a natural antibiotic that targets gram-negative bacteria produced by nematode symbionts Photorhabdus. In June 2020, he started his master thesis project at Prof. Dr. Stefan Knapp's group focused on Biochemical Characterization of Inhibitors for Ephrin Receptor Kinases. After he pursued his master thesis project, he joined SGC Frankfurt as a Laboratory Technician in the Biochemistry Department working on EUbOPEN Consortium.