Prof. Iwan de Esch (Fragnet Coordinator)

Prof. Iwan de Esch (Fragnet Coordinator) did his PhD research at the Department of Pharmacochemistry, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 1998, he became research associate at the Drug Design Group of the University of Cambridge. Dr de Esch is a co-founder of De Novo Pharmaceuticals (2000) where he worked as a group and project leader. Dr de Esch returned to academia in 2003 and is now professor at the Medicinal Chemistry Department. The group focuses on two research lines, namely G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and fragment-based lead discovery (FBLD). Iwan is interested in applying FBDD approaches for lead discovery on a wide variety of targets (including GPCRs, kinases, PDEs and PPIs) and to use fragment-based approaches to study the ligand-protein binding event (in terms of affinity, thermodynamics and kinetics). Dr. de Esch is co-founder of IOTA Pharmaceuticals Ltd (2007) and Griffin Discoveries BV (2009). In 2011, he was awarded the Galenus Research Price for his work on FBLD.