Leading organizer:

San Diego Chinese Association (SDCA)

Co-organizers:

SABPA, San Diego and American Chemical Society, San Diego

Organizing Committee:

Hui Cai, Ph.D.
Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development

Sui Xiong Cai, Ph.D.
Maxim Pharmaceuticals

Cathy Chang, Ph.D.
Diversa Corporation

Yun He, Ph.D.
Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation

Paul Furth, Ph.D.
Idun Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Michael Pu, Ph.D.
Accelrys, Inc.

Yuerong Zhu, Ph.D.
Pharmingen, BD Biosciences

Hui Cai, Medicinal Chemist, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, La Jolla.

With a background in organic synthesis and bioorganic chemistry, Dr. Cai is currently a medicinal chemist at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development in San Diego, where she has been working on drug discovery programs targeting diseases of the immune system. She is co-inventor to six patents and author of over 20 peer reviewed papers. She obtained her B.S. and M.S. from Department of Chemistry, Peking University and her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute.

Sui Xiong Cai, Senior Director of Chemistry of Maxim Pharmaceuticals.

Prior to the merger of Cytovia with Maxim, Dr. Cai was Director of Chemistry and then Senior Director of Chemistry of Cytovia. Prior to joining Cytovia, a company spun off from CoCensys, Dr. Cai was Associate Director of Chemistry at CoCensys. He was one of the early employees of Acea and moved to CoCensys after Acea was acquired. Dr. Cai has extensive experience in drug research and discovery, including the discovery of CNS and anticancer agents, the development of HTS assays, as well as the management of company patent portfolio and intellectual property. Dr. Cai is the co-inventor of 37 issued US patents. He has published more than 5o peer-reviewed papers. Dr. Cai earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Oregon and his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China.

Cathy Chang, Associate Director, Diversa Corporation.

Dr. Chang is currently the Associate Director of Molecular Diversity at Diversa Corporation. Her group is responsible for extracting nucleic acid, and constructing cDNA and genomic libraries, from Diversa’s extensive collection of environmental samples. Prior to joining Diversa, Dr. Chang was a Director at Digital Gene Technologies, where she was responsible for managing the laboratory and robotics for DGT’s proprietary gene expression assay. Her team at DGT also engaged in technology development to advance DGT’s RNA and gene expression methods. Dr. Chang also worked at Stratagene as a Staff Scientist, and she completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in the Division of Oncovirology. She earned her graduate and undergraduate degrees at Arizona State University and the California Institute of Technology, respectively.

Yun He, Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF).

Dr. He has been working on drug discovery programs in infectious disease, inflammation and oncology. Prior to joining GNF, he was a Group Leader at Ibis Therapeutics, a division of ISIS Pharmaceutical Inc., where he worked on drug discovery programs in infectious disease by targeting RNAs. He also carried out drug discovery researches in neuroscience at Abbot Laboratories for several years. Dr. He received his Ph.D. from the Scripps Research Institute.

Paul Furth, Ph.D. Idun Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

After graduating from Loyola College in Baltimore, Paul spent three years working in Dr. C. H. Robinson’s lab at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Through this research on mechanism-based inhibitors of Aromatase, he developed an interest in Medicinal Chemistry, and was instrumental in helping elucidate the mechanism of inhibition. After his graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University, he landed a post-doctorate position at the University of California at San Francisco with Dr. P. Ortiz de Montellano. His research there involved methodologies of rational drug design, specifically targeting the HIV Protease at a time when industry paid little consideration to HIV therapies. Through a collaborate effort between several labs, including individuals with Drs. I. Kuntz and C. Craig, helped lead Paul and the other chemists to design and synthesis the first published nonpeptide-based inhibitors for the HIV Protease. For the past eleven years, Paul has been actively working in industry with several biotechnology companies. His first position was at Cadus in NY (in Signal Transduction), followed by ArQule (Combinatorial Chemistry), and PharmaGenics in NJ (MDM2/p53). A position at TRL (Integrins) brought him to San Diego, where he’s resided for six years. Currently, Paul works at Idun Pharmaceuticals, and is actively involved with the discovery and development of inhibitors of Caspase.

Michael Pu: Product Scientist, R&D, Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, in Accelrys, Inc.

With background in both chemistry and computer sciences, Dr. Pu is specially interested in computer-aided drug discovery and development. Dr. Pu got B.S. and M.S. from Peking University, Beijing, China, majoring in chemistry. He received his Ph.D. from University of Cincinnati, with research focus in polymer chemistry. He had been interested in applying computational technology to chemistry and other sciences since graduated as B.S. and has been working in software industry for several years. His expertise is bioinformatics, cheminformatics, and database engineering.

Yuerong Zhu, Bioinformatics Scientist, Pharmingen, BD Biosciences.