Dr. Stephen W. Fesik to Deliver 2015 Dave Memorial Lecture

Cancer-drug pioneer Stephen W. Fesik, PhD, will deliver the 2015 Dave Memorial Lecture at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Dr. Fesik is the Orrin H. Ingram II Chair in Cancer Research of the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center and a Professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology and Chemistry in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology and the Center for Structural Biology and Co-Leader of the Signal Transduction and Chemical Biology Research Program. Among his other recognitions, Dr. Fesik received the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research from the American Association for Cancer Research in 2012.

Dr. Fesik’s lecture is entitled “Cancer drug discovery using fragment-based methods and structure-based design,” and will take place in the David C. Hohn Auditorium in Roswell Park’s Research Studies Center from 10:30 a.m. to noon. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Dr. Fesik is best known for a 1996 Science paper in which he outlined a highly influential method for drug discovery known as SAR by NMR, or structure-activity relationship by nuclear magnetic resonance. His research has played an essential role in the development of novel therapeutics for targets in cancer such as Ras, RPA70N, Bcl-2, Mcl-1, and XIAP, and research from his lab has yielded a pipeline of anti-cancer compounds currently being evaluated in clinical trials.