Esther Lee
Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry AstraZeneca
Esther Lee received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania working under the guidance of Jeffrey D. Winkler followed by post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of David W. C. MacMillan at Princeton University. In 2010, she began her industrial career at Pfizer working in the cardiovascular and metabolic disease areas. In 2018, she joined X-Chem Pharmaceuticals and then in 2020 joined AstraZeneca, both working in oncology. Currently, she is Associate Director in the Medicinal Chemistry Oncology Targeted Discovery group at AstraZeneca. In these last two roles, she has worked extensively on a variety of targets utilizing the PROTAC modality and has learned the nuances of design and lead optimization in this field working collaboratively with other medicinal chemists and DMPK colleagues, who have published numerous manuscripts on optimizing physicochemical properties of PROTAC molecules.
Seminars
Effective degrader development relies on precise optimization of key molecular properties to ensure robust, reliable degradation efficiency. Explore how to measure these essential properties, build a process for efficient optimization, and develop a platform to create degraders quickly and reliably. Featuring real-world case studies, this session offers practical strategies to streamline degrader design for maximum therapeutic impact. We will cover:
- The creation of HPB-143/VP-776: an optimized IRAK4 PROTAC modeled against the benchmark KT-474
- Identification and development of BCL-XL protein degraders
- Is ternary complex kinetic stability a key driver of degradation efficiency?
