RSC Desktop Seminar Series with RSC Medicinal Chemistry & RSC-BMCS

Dr. James Crawford is a Senior Principal Scientist and Project Team Leader in Small Molecule Drug Discovery at Genentech.
Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, James obtained his MSci and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from the University of Strathclyde, in addition to building an affinity for watching Rangers F.C. and listening to The Smiths. He joined Professor K.C. Nicolaou’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute as a Fulbright scholar, then started his industrial career in 2006 with AstraZeneca in their Respiratory and Inflammation group. In 2010, he moved to Genentech, where he has worked across Immunology, Oncology, Antibacterials, and Regenerative Medicine. One of his key roles has been as the chemistry leader of the BTK project team at Genentech, resulting in the discovery of Fenebrutinib which is in Ph3 clinical trials.

Dr. Maria Duca is head of Targeting of Nucleic Acids research group in the Institute of Chemistry of Nice (Université Côte d’Azur - CNRS). After undergraduate studies in Pharmacy and Medicinal Chemistry (Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Bologna, Italy), she obtained her PhD in Molecular Biochemistry under the supervision of Dr. Paola B. Arimondo (National Natural History Museum, Paris, France) working on topoisomerase II inhibitors. A 2- year post-doctoral training in Sydney Hecht’s lab (Department of Chemistry, University of Virginia, USA) allowed her to pursue the study of nucleic acids working on targeted protein mutagenesis upon chemical modification of tRNAs. After CNRS recruitment as a Research Scientist in 2007, her research activities focus on the targeting of non-coding RNAs using synthetic small molecules toward innovative therapeutic approaches for anticancer, antiviral and antimicrobial applications.