The French medicinal chemistry society (SCT) created a group of young academic and industrial researchers, named SCT Young MedChem Forum – YMCF, with the aim of supporting young medicinal chemists and students who wish to become by inspiring, training and connecting them.

Léa Bouché joined the group of H.-U. Reissig at the Freie Universität Berlin for a thesis on the synthesis of enantiopure oxepanes as mime of multivalent carbohydrates, after obtaining a master degree in organic and bio-organic chemistry at the Pierre & Marie Curie University in Paris. A first academic postdoc in collaboration with the Charité Hospital was followed by an industrial postdoc in the medicinal chemistry department of Bayer Pharma. Her position as head of the laboratory allowed her to explore multiple projects in the field of oncology over a period of six years where her contributions were focused on epigenetic targets. During this period, she participated in the "donated chemical probes" platform of Bayer in collaboration with the SGC (structural genomics consortium). Since March 2021, Léa joined the pRED (pharma research and early development) of F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG in Basel (Switzerland) where she is working as a senior scientist.

 

Guillaume Compain holds a master degree in organic chemistry and completed his thesis at the l'Institut de Chimie des Milieux et des Matériaux of Poitiers (IC2MP) on the development of new synthesis methodologies in superacid medium. After an ATER position, he did a postdoc at the University of Southampton to study the hydrogen bonding properties and lipophilicity of fluorohydrins. Back in France, he first joined the Institut de Chimie of Nice to study metal complexes formed from Lewis superacids, then the IC2MP, to design new strategies for the delivery of anticancer molecules. Appointed lecturer at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Bordeaux in 2017, he joined the peptidomimetic chemistry team of the Institute of Membrane and Nano-object Chemistry. His current research activities focus on the design of antibiotics active on WHO-critical strains and on the study of supramolecular properties of partially fluorinated compounds.

 

Gilles Degotte graduated in 2017 from the University of Liege (Belgium) with a Master's degree in Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences with a research focus. Afterwrads, he realized a PhD thesis within the Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy laboratories at ULiège. This FRIA thesis, co-directed by Dr. P. Francotte and Pr. M. Frédérich, aimed at the pharmaco-modulation of natural polyphenolic substances, mainly ellagic acid, in order to develop new drug candidates against malaria. Having defended his thesis in December 2021, he joined the I2BM team in the Department of Molecular Chemistry at the University of Grenoble-Alpes (France) in March 2022 to work with Dr. T. Lavergne on the development of a DNA-encoded cyclopeptoid library to target G-quadruplex structures. In 2023, he will move to the University of California San Francisco to work within Prof. Renslo's lab on development of new antivirals as part of the AVIDD initiative.     

 

Sandy Desrat is a chemical engineer graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie of Mulhouse (ENSCMu). He obtained a PhD in organic chemistry in 2010 at the University of Rennes 1 after working on the total synthesis of a natural molecule. Following a postdoctoral position in synthesis methodology with Pr. William B. Motherwell at the University College London (UCL), he worked for more than 2 years at the Institute of Chemistry of Natural Substances (ICSN) in Gif-sur-Yvette on pharmacomodulation and biomimetic synthesis of analogues of a cytotoxic natural product. After a brief experience in therapeutic chemistry with Dr. Nicolas Pietrancosta at Paris Descartes University in 2014, he joined NovAliX pharma in Madrid as a project manager for 1 year. In 2015, he was recruited as a research fellow at ICSN (CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette). Since then, he develops research projects in the fields of therapeutic chemistry and chemobiology focusing on the synthesis, study and valorization of specialized plant metabolites.

 

Guillaume Eppe obtained a PhD in chemical sciences from the University of Namur (Belgium). His doctoral research, supervised by Prof. Stéphane Vincent, focused on the preparation of novel inhibitors of enzymes essential for the survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the team of Prof. Ilan Marek in Haifa, Israel. The research topic was the stereoselective opening of constrained rings for the preparation of quaternary stereogenic centers. In 2014, he joined the medicinal chemistry department of Johnson & Johnson in Beerse (Belgium) to prepare new protease inhibitors active in the central nervous system. Afterwards, he continued his career at Evotec (Toulouse) where he is currently a team leader inside the medicinal chemistry department.

 

Amanda Garrido is a Doctor of Pharmacy (2019) and Doctor of Organic Chemistry (2020) from the University of Tours. During her thesis research in medicinal chemistry, she worked on the design of novel heterocyclic compounds with antitumor properties against breast cancers. After an ATER at the drug research center of Normandy on the synthesis of new radiotracers for medical imaging, she was recruited as a lecturer at the Institute of Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences of the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (2021). She teaches organic chemistry to pharmacy students and carries out her research activity in the design of new antibiotics in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

 

Nicolas George After a DUT and a bachelor degree in chemistry at Paris-Saclay University and a master degree in organic chemistry at Sorbonne University, he did a PhD and a postdoc in total synthesis of complex natural substances at the Institute of Chemistry of Natural Substances (ICSN) in Gif-sur-Yvette under the supervision of Dr. Jieping Zhu and Dr. Géraldine Masson and at Imperial College London under the supervision of Prof. Anthony Barrett. After a second short postdoc at ICSN, Nicolas joined the industry, at GSK (Villebon-sur-Yvette), as a challenging target synthesis chemist and then quickly as a medicinal chemist. It was during his master 1 internship at Sanofi in Vitry-sur-Seine that Nicolas was introduced to medicinal chemistry. From that moment on, his university course was chosen to make it his profession. Until 2022, he held the position of project and team leader at Oncodesign (Villebon-sur-Yvette) before joining Aqemia in Decembre 2022. Nicolas is at the origin of the creation of the SCT Young MedChem Forum.

 

Frederic Miege is an engineer from the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles of Paris (ESPCI Paris). He obtained a master's degree in organic chemistry at Sorbonne University and a PhD in organic chemistry in 2011 in the organic chemistry laboratory of ESCPI, supervised by Pr. Janine Cossy and Dr. Christophe Meyer. His work focused on the reactivity of cylopropenes in the presence of transition metals. He then did a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University under the supervision of Prof. Barry Trost, working on the development of new dinuclear ZN/ProPhenol complexes for direct enantioselective aldolization and natural product synthesis. Upon his return to France, he joined Edelris as a synthetic chemist. He currently holds the position of project leader in medicinal chemistry.