Programme
Tuesday June 2nd
11:00 Registration opens
11:30 – 13:00 Lunch break and poster setup
13:00 – 13:10 Welcome & Introductions
13:10 – 14:35 Session I – Heterobifunctional molecules
13:10 – 13:55 Jian Jin, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Discovery of Novel Degraders and Stabilizers and Development of New Approaches to Target Undruggable Proteins
13:55 – 14:15 Marcus D. Hartmann, Max Planck Institute for Biology
TBD
14:15 -14:35 Roman Sarott, Max Planck Institute for Medical Research
Rewiring the BCL6 transcription factor in hematological malignancies
14:35 – 15:40 Coffee break and Poster Session I
15:40 – 17:20 Session II – Structure-based drug discovery
15:40 – 16:25 Stefan Knapp, Goethe University Frankfurt & SGC
Identification of new E3 ligands for the development of the next generation PROTACs
16:25 – 16:45 Simona Collina, University of Pavia
Small molecules interfering with HuR-RNA complexes: A promising strategy to discover anticancer agents
16:45 – 17:05 Stefan Laufer, University of Tübingen
First-in-class ultra long-target-residence-time p38α inhibitors as a mitosis-targeted therapy for colorectal cancer
17:05 – 17:20 Louisa Temme, University of Hamburg
MedChem tools and approaches to explore understudied binding sites of ion channels and kinases
17:20 – 17:30 Welcome to Kuopio!
17:30 – 19:30 Lake cruise
Wednesday June 3rd
08:30 – 11:40 Session III – Virtual screening and Ligand Discovery
8:30 – 9:15 Matthias Rarey, University of Hamburg
TBD
9:15 – 9:35 Thierry Langer, University of Vienna
Next Generation Pharmacophore Modeling: Tools for Advanced Compound Design and Derisking
9:35 – 9:50 Giacomo Rossino, University of Pavia
TBD
09:50 – 10:30 Coffee break
10:30 – 10:45 Beth Tuerk, Pharmacelera
Ultra-Large Virtual Screening Powered by 3D QM-Derived Hydrophobicity Descriptors
10:45 – 11:05 Gabriele Cruciani, University of Perugia
When Molecular Interaction Fields Work and When They’d Better Not – Lessons from Case Studies
11:05 – 11:25 Björn Windshügel, Fraunhofer-ITMP & Constructor University
Application of Structure-Based Virtual Screening for Challenging Drug Targets
11:25 – 11:40 Larisa Ivanova, University of Tartu
Fragment-based design of potential ALKBH5 inhibitors
11:40 – 14:00 Lunch break and Poster Session II
14:00 – 15:00 Session IV – Careers in Drug Discovery – Round table
15:00 – 15:30 Coffee break
15:30 – 17:40 Session V – MD, ML and AI at the next level part I
15:30 – 16:15 Rebecca Wade, HITS gGmbH & Heidelberg University
TBD
16:15 – 16:35 Mikko Karttunen, University of Eastern Finland
Using machine learning for molecular structure and force-field improvement
16:35 – 16:55 Daniel Merk, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Structural Optimization and Bioactivity Prediction of Drug Molecules with Chemical Language Models
16:55 – 17:10 Thales Kronenberger, University of Tübingen & DZIF
Molecular modelling application to nuclear receptors
17:10 – 17:25 Maria Cairoli, AstraZeneca
Beyond natural amino acids: extending immunogenicity risk assessment to noncanonical peptide drugs through chemical feature encoding
17:25 – 17:40 Henriette Willems, University of Cambridge
Docking vs protein folding: what works best?
18:30 – 22:00 Conference dinner
Thursday June 4th
08:30 – 11:15 Session VI – Assay Development & Imaging
8:30 – 9:15 Yves Auberson, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical research
The importance of using the right assays in drug discovery programs
9:15 – 9:35 Matthew Robers, Promega
BRETSA: Target engagement in cells with denaturation-sensitive BRET probes
9:35 – 9:55 James Murphy, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Working Remotely – using protein ligands to identify allosteric drug targets in (pseudo)kinases
09:55 – 10:20 Coffee break
10:20 – 10:40 John Scott, Monash University
Targeting CAMK4 in profound autism: In silico discovery of active-site and allosteric inhibitors
10:40 – 11:00 Daniela Ungureanu, University of Oulu
Single-Cell Pharmacotranscriptomics at Scale: Adding a Functional Dimension to the Drug Discovery Toolbox
11:00 – 11:15 Kilian Colas, The University of Tokyo
Direct mRNA Display Discovery of de novo Engineered Ubiquitins Selective for Oncogenic Mutants
11:15 – 13:00 Lunch break and Poster Session III
13:00 – 16:00 Session VII – MD, ML and AI at the next levelpart II
13:00 – 13:45 Ilpo Vattulainen, University of Helsinki
TBD
13:45 – 14:05 Eva Nittinger, AstraZeneca
TBD
14:05 – 14:25 Aniket Magarkar, Boehringer Ingelheim
Leveraging Molecular Interactions for Drug Discovery: Interpreting with MD, Learning with AI and Designing with Generative Models
14:25 – 14:40 Sophia Hönig, BioSolveIT GmbH
Chemical Space Docking Finds Novel IspE Inhibitors Exploiting the ATP Syn-Conformation
14:40 – 15:10 Coffee break
15:10 – 15:30 Heikki Käsnänen, Orion Pharma
Predicting Drug–Target Residence Times with Molecular Dynamics: Lessons from Industrial Drug Discovery
15:30 – 15:45 Márton Vass, Schrödinger Technologies Ltd.
Towards a Comprehensive De Novo Design Approach: The Discovery of p38:MK2 Molecular Glues
15:45 – 16:00 Poster prizes
16:00 – 16:15 Short break
16:15 – 17:00 Session VIII – Notes on Academic Drug Discovery
16:15 – 16:55 Antti Poso, University of Eastern Finland
Oberlech 1991 vs. Kuopio 2026: It’s still Physics – These aren’t the shortcuts you’re looking for…
In Oberlech (1991), we debated force fields, membrane MD, water models, quantum chemistry, early neural networks, and docking/virtual screening. In Kuopio (2026), we still do – only with GPUs, enhanced sampling, ABFE, and ML‑augmented potentials. In drug design, the “Force” is not magic: AI is useful only insofar as it respects the potential energy surface and thermodynamics.
16:55 – 17:00 Closing words