Tímea Polgár

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Timea received her Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences with emphasis in chemical engineering and computational approaches for early phase drug discovery at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, graduating summa cum laude. Her postdoctoral training was in biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology at Albert Szent–Györgyi Medical University in Hungary. She also received a M.Sc. in chemistry with emphasis in computational approaches and a M.Sc. in molecular biology.

Her broad experience includes strategic business development and research and development with over 15 years in pharmaceutical research and development, biotechnology and scientific software development. She has all–encompassing technical and scientific expertise in drug discovery, with specialty in network pharmacology, ligand–based and structure–based drug design, virtual screening, chemical and biopharmaceutical database management, high–content data analysis and genetics. She has published in about 30 peer reviewed journals and book chapters in the scientific literature. Timea is devoted to developing the overall quality of life through Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, supporting children and education.

Abstract for Nov 21 

Natural products have historically been a rich source of compounds for drug discovery. However, their use has diminished in recent times, in part because of:

  • Availability of natural products on the market;
  • Patentability;
  • Synthesizability;
  • Technical barriers to screening natural products in high-throughput assays against molecular targets;
  • A lack of understanding and trust in alternative and traditional medicine practices;
  • Ambiguous evidence-based information on natural products including health outcomes and safety evaluation.
  • How could modern technology augment a re-emergence of natural products for drug discovery and healthcare applications? 

An open innovation framework approach including infrastructure development, data sharing, crowdsourcing, natural product mimetic library design and evidence-based workflows to address ways forward will be discussed.