|
The Drug Discovery Center was founded in 2006 by
Prof. Dr. H. Irth, Bioanalytical Chemistry, VU,
Prof. Dr. R. Leurs, Medicinal Chemistry, VU,
Prof. Dr. A.B. Smit, Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology, VU.
Hubertus Irth obtained his M.Sc. degree
in Environmental Technology at the Technical University of Berlin
(Germany). In 1989 he received his PhD in Analytical Chemistry at the
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands). After a post-doc stay
at the Chemical Center of Lund University (Sweden), he became assistant
professor at the Leiden/Amsterdam Center for Drug Research (Leiden, The
Netherlands) working on the implementation of biospecific interaction
in analytical technologies. In 1997 he founded Kiadis BV (formerly
Screentec BV), a spin-off company developing and commercializing novel
drug discovery technologies. Since 1999 he is professor for Biomolecular
Analysis at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Chief Scientific Officer
of Kiadis BV (Groningen, The Netherlands).
Rob Leurs is Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the
Faculty of Science of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. From 1982 to
1997 he was a Senior Scientist of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences
(KNAW). Since 2003 he is one of the two research directors of the
Leiden/Amsterdam Center for Drug Research. For his work on G-protein
coupled receptors he received the Galenus Research Prize, a Pfizer
Academic Award and the Organon Prize for Pharmacology.
Guus Smit is Professor of Molecular Neurobiology
at the Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit in
Amsterdam. He is co-director of the Institute for Neuroscience. His
research is focused on synapse formation and molecular plasticity of
synapses. In 2001 he determined (in close collaboration with Dr. Sixma,
NKI) the structure of the ligand binding domain of an acetylcholine
binding protein, which has become a worldwide accepted model for the
nicotinic acetylcholine receptor.
|
