Amanda Hargrove
Director & Professor - Medicinal Chemistry University of Toronto
Amanda E. Hargrove is a Canada Research Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, having moved from Duke University in July 2024. Prof. Hargrove earned her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin followed by an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Prof. Hargrove’s laboratory focuses on developing small molecule probes to investigate the structure and function of RNA molecules relevant to human disease. Recent honors include: the RNA Society Elisa Izaurralde Award for Innovation in Research, Teaching, and Service; the Sloan Research Fellowship; the American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee Rising Star Award; and the Cram Lehn Pedersen Prize in Supramolecular Chemistry. Prof. Hargrove serves on the editorial advisory boards of ChemComm, Current Protocols, Medicinal Research Reviews and Supramolecular Chemistry, as a Councilor for the American Chemical Society Division of Biochemistry and Chemical Biology, and on the Board of Directors for the RNA Society and RNA Canada ARN.
Seminars
Practical and highly interactive breakout roundtables where attendees can crowd source solutions and share opinions around pre-assigned topic areas.
- Building RNA-focused libraries using known RNA-binding chemotypes, public datasets, chemical similarity, scaffold diversity, and RNA-relevant molecular features
- Addressing limitations of commercial screening collections by reducing reliance on protein-biased, patent-crowded, or overly familiar RNA-binding chemotypes
- Designing ML-interpretable libraries that support more efficient screening, hit clustering, SAR development, and chemical space exploration
Moderator Feedback & Audience Debate
Moderators will be assigned to each roundtable to facilitate discussion and collate the findings. Following the roundtable discussions, they will present back to the entire delegation and open wider audience debate
- Exploring lncRNAs as actionable targets in prostate cancer
- Targeting SChLAP1 with selective small molecule approaches
- Sharing emerging toxicity and xenograft data in vivo
