11th Annual CBC Symposium
“Exploring Human Biology with Small Molecules”
DATE: Friday, October 11, 2013
LOCATION: The University of Chicago
Ida Noyes Hall
1212 East 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Symposium Recap
11th Annual CBC Symposium: Small Molecules Attract a Big Crowd
October 30, 2013
The 11th Annual CBC Symposium, “Exploring Human Biology with Small Molecules,” took place on Friday, October 11, 2013, at The University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall. The all day event was organized by Shohei Koide, the UChicago CBC Scientific Director, and by recipients of the 2009 CBC Lever Award, “Chicago Tri-Institutional Center of Excellence in Chemical Methodologies & Library Development”: Sergey A. Kozmin (UChicago), Karl A. Scheidt (NU), and Jie Liang (UIC).
Almost 300 students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, staff and research scientists attended the symposium. Attendees from the CBC universities were joined by their colleagues from Rush, Loyola, Midwest University, IIT, area hospitals and medical centers and local biotechnology companies including SynChem, Jasin Discovery Solution Inc. and AbbVie. In addition to featuring research presentations by three outstanding scientists from the CBC universities and four from other U.S. institutions, the symposium also included a poster session and ample time for networking. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows presented 38 posters, and the interactive lunchtime session provided an excellent venue to describe their current research and obtain feedback from multiple scientists. The symposium concluded with a well-attended reception where research ideas were discussed and potential collaborations were initiated.
The first speaker of the morning session, Kevan M. Shokat, University of California San Francisco and University of California Berkeley, gave a talk on “New Chemical Approaches for Treating Neurodegeneration and Cancer: Activators of the PINK1 Kinase and Inhibitors of K-Ras.” Stephen J. Kron, UChicago, presented the second morning talk, “Targeting Metabolism and Immortality in Cancer.” Following a networking coffee break, Gregory R. J. Thatcher, UIC, gave a talk entitled “Beyond the Probe: From Protein Post-translational Modifications to Function,” and was followed by Paul J. Hergenrother, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discussing “Natural Products as an Engine for Biological Discovery.” The afternoon session opened with Richard B. Silverman, Northwestern University, presenting “CaV1.3-Selective L-Type Calcium Channel Antagonists to Slow the Progression of Parkinson’s Disease.” Virginia W. Cornish, Columbia University, spoke about “Expanding the Synthetic Capabilities of Yeast.” The last speaker of the meeting was Stuart L. Schreiber, Harvard University and a Founding Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Schreiber concluded with a talk titled “Human Biology, Chemical Biology & The Science of Therapeutics,” in which he discussed his own research and recapitulated the main points of the meeting.
PHOTOS: 11th Annual CBC Symposium, “Exploring Human Biology with Small Molecules.” From the left: Q&A session following the symposium talks in Max Palevsky Cinema at Ida Noyeas Hall, lunch and poster session in Cloister Club. (Photos: CBC)
see also
▸ Symposium program
▸ Speaker bios
▸ Symposium announcement