Dr. Elvin de Araujo is the Research Manager for the Centre for Medicinal Chemistry. His research focuses on exploring and targeting oncogenic proteins in the context of medicinal chemistry and structural biophysics. He also oversees CMC staff and trainees and facilitates their entrepreneurial growth in building spin-off companies to their value inflection point.

Abstract:
The paradigm of pharmaceutical industry has, over the past two decades, significantly transformed with a focus on pushing advanced assets through clinical development and down-sizing of large-scale and costly research and development centres. This has, in turn, led to a blossoming innovative biotech ecosystem, which has mined the academic centres for cutting edge, breakthrough IP for nimble, rapid drug candidate development. Our research team at the Centre for Medicinal Chemistry have sought to exploit these landscape shifts while streamlining different phases of the drug discovery pipeline, starting with synthesizing organic molecules, biophysical evaluation, cellular testing, chemo-proteomics, structural analysis, and pre-clinical trials. Here we will discuss our progress focussed on the theme of covalent chemistry and how it has led to our progress in developing STAT3/STAT5, HDAC, and other kinase-targeting molecular assets in atomic detail. Our work has led to funding of HDAX Therapeutics, a spin-off biotech from the University of Toronto Mississauga and it contributed also to growth and developments in other biotech companies.