COVID Moonshot - A Collaborative Approach to Antiviral Discovery

Recorded live June 9, 2022

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of scientists hailing from academic and industrial organizations around the world came together with the ambitious goal of discovering an antiviral against the virus. Two years later, the COVID Moonshot consortium has identified multiple compounds to be entered into preclinical trial.

Join this webinar to hear behind-the-scene stories of COVID Moonshot and learn how this non-profit, open-science project was able to achieve significant results with limited resources.

Featuring these leading scientists...

Monalisa Chatterji, PhD

Cofounder,
Sekkei Bio Pvt. Ltd.

Monalisa Chatterji has 20+ years of experience in both small molecules and biologics discovery and development. She is the innovator for TBA-7371 (anti-infective) and T1h (Mab) at AstraZeneca and Biocon, respectively. 

For the last three years, Dr. Chatterji served as Senior Program Officer at Gates Foundation where she supported collaborative COVID research with WHO, DNDi, and CARE, and was involved in the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator. 

Dr. Chatterji received Integrated M.S. & Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science, India and conducted post-doctoral research at Yale University. She was recognized among 75 women by the government of India in 2022 for "excellence in the field of STEAM".

Ed Griffen, PhD

Technical Director, MedChemica Ltd

Ed Griffen is a Technical Director at MedChemica Limited and leads the Design Team in the COVID Moonshot.
His interests are in medicinal chemistry, particularly in anti-infectives and the development of new approaches focused on explainable AI methods to improve and accelerate lead generation and optimization.

Prior to that he was a Team Leader and Principal Scientist at AstraZeneca based in the UK working in anti-infectives, oncology and computational chemistry.

Dr. Griffen received a B.Sc. and Ph.D. from Imperial College London, and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship with Professor Victor Snieckus at the University of Waterloo.

Annette von Delft, MD, PhD

Translational Scientist, University of Oxford

Annette von Delft joined University of Oxford in 2018 as a translational scientist with a focus on inflammation and immunity. She is currently driving the COVID Moonshot open science drug discovery project in collaboration with multiple international partners. 

Dr. von Delft trained as a medical doctor at University of Leipzig and received her D.Phil in Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford. Her project focused on HCV T cell immunology and vaccine development under the supervision of Prof Eleanor Barnes. She then completed her medical foundation program at Oxford University Hospitals