Jumpstarting the Next Generation of Therapeutics Development

Dan Nomura is a Professor of Chemical Biology and Molecular Therapeutics in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology in the Division of Molecular Therapeutics at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute. He is also the Co-Director of the Molecular Therapeutics Initiative at UC Berkeley. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF. Since 2017, he has been the Director of the Novartis-Berkeley Translational Chemical Biology Institute focused on using chemoproteomic platforms to tackle the undruggable proteome. He is Co-Founder of Frontier Medicines, a start-up company focused on using chemoproteomics and machine learning approaches to tackle the undruggable proteome. He is also the Founder of Vicinitas Therapeutics based on his group’s discovery of the Deubiquitinase Targeting Chimera (DUBTAC) platform for targeted protein stabilization. In addition, he is a co-founder of Zenith. He is on the Scientific Advisory Boards for Frontier Medicines, Vicinitas Therapeutics, Zenith, Photys Therapeutics, Apertor Pharma, Oerth Bio, and Deciphera Pharmaceuticals. Nomura is also on the scientific advisory board of The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. He is also an Investment Advisory Partner at a16z Bio+Health, an Investment Advisory Board member at Droia Ventures, and an iPartner with The Column Group. He earned his B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology in 2003 and Ph.D. in Molecular Toxicology in 2008 at UC Berkeley with Professor John Casida and was a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Research with Professor Benjamin F. Cravatt before returning to Berkeley as a faculty member in 2011. Among his honors include the National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award, Searle Scholar, and the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research ASPIRE award.

Nomura Research Group

Roberto Zoncu is a Professor of Molecular Therapeutics in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley,  and Co-director of the Molecular Therapeutics Initiative. He graduated in biological sciences with honors from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1999. Between 2000 to 2007, Roberto carried out his PhD studies in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Yale University School of Medicine, followed by postdoctoral work at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research of MIT between 2008 and 2013. In 2014, Roberto opened his own independent lab at Berkeley, where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2019 and to full Professor in 2023. Roberto is Co-Founder and Scientific Advisory Board Member for Frontier Medicines, an oncology company based in San Francisco and Boston. He is also a Scientific Advisory Board Member and Consultant for Nine Square Therapeutics, an early-stage company focusing on neurodegenerative diseases.
He is a permanent member of the NIH Cellular Signaling and Regulatory Systems (CSRS)  study section, a member of the Scientific Committee of Fondazione Telethon, and a Scientific Advisory Member at the Venetian Institute for Molecular Medicine in Padova.  Roberto’s work has been recognized, among others, by the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Pew-Stewart Scholarship for Cancer Research the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, the Pew Innovation Award and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative ‘Metabolism across scales’ award.

Zoncu Lab

Dr. Julia Schaletzky is the Executive Director of the Molecular Therapeutics Initiative and the founder of the Drug Discovery Center at UC Berkeley. Originally from Germany, she trained as a Biochemist at Bayreuth University and completed her diploma thesis in the laboratory of Prof. Francis Barr at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. Dr. Schaletzky then went abroad to obtain her PhD in the laboratory of Prof. Tom Rapoport at Harvard Medical School/HHMI. Interested in applied science, Dr. Schaletzky joined a biotechnology company, Cytokinetics. There, she developed first-in-class therapies for heart disease and neurodegenerative disorders, with several molecules in late-stage clinical trials or FDA approved. Dr. Schaletzky and her team discovered the starting points for first-in-class HCM drug mavacamten (Camzyos®) and aficamten, making treatment of a previously intractable disease possible.

In her role at UC Berkeley, she focuses on interdisciplinary approaches and public/private partnership for the discovery and development of new therapies and tools for unmet medical needs, on translational science and entrepreneurship. Dr. Schaletzky is also a Professor of Molecular Therapeutics (Adj.) and a lecturer at the Haas School of Business, teaching Bioentrepreneurship, Bioethics, and Access to Medicines. She has received NIH-funded grants to support underrepresented minorities and women in STEM in the U.S. and ran a program in Uganda to build local research capacity in her previous role at the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases. Dr. Schaletzky is broadly interested in drug discovery, development and regulation, bioethics, the philosophy and history of science, and the governance of processes that determine access to care.