TOXI Symposium at the 2024 Fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver

Irakly Shanidze

Many thanks to our Program Chair, Dr. Sarah Shuck (City of Hope), and Chair-elect, Dr. Grover P Miller (University of Arkansas ) for organizing the TOXI symposium at the 2024 Fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver!

TOXI program featured symposia on Current Topics on Toxicology and Elevating Research & Careers in the Development of Safer Drugs through Artificial Intelligence – Sponsored by CINF, Cosponsored by MEDI and TOXI, TOXI 28th Anniversary Symposium, and Revealing Toxicological Mechanisms of Small Molecules Using Chemical Biology – Cosponsored by BIOL. We closed the program with a symposium on Advances in Forensic Toxicology- Cosponsored by ANYL and ENVR.

Awards Symposia

CRT Young Investigator Award 2024 was given to Dr. Nate Snyder, Temple University, who organized a session focused on “Compartmentalization of metabolism across scales”.

 

Dr. Amanda Bryant-Friedrich, Wayne State University, received the TOXI Founders Award 2024 and organized a symposium focused on DNA adducts detection and relevance in human disease.

A stellar lineup of Toxi senior members delivered outstanding presentations: Drs. Penning, Tretyakova,  Dedon, and of course Dr. Bryant-Friedrich herself! She is the Dean of Graduate School and a Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Wayne State University. Dr. Bryant-Friedrich is an experienced scientist with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. She is an Academic Leadership Fellow of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy with a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Keynote Speaker

 

Dr. Schepartz, the keynote speaker for Fall ACS TOXI 2024, pictured with Dr. Shuck, the Program Director

The TOXI Keynote Lecture “Design rules for efficient endosomal escape” was given by Dr. Alanna Schepartz., UC Berkeley. Dr. Schepartz is currently the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly the Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. Her laboratory is well known for the creative application of chemical principles to understand and control biological recognition and function. Her research has guided thinking in multiple areas of chemical biology, including the understanding of how specificity is achieved during protein-DNA and protein-protein recognition processes; how to design molecules (“miniature proteins”) that function as inhibitors of protein-protein interactions; how these molecules can be engineered to reach the cell cytosol intact and with high efficiency; and the development of β-peptides as protein ligands and as building blocks of protein-like architectures. 

 Thank you to all who participated in the conference in person and virtually!