Marie-Hélène Larraufie

Marie-Hélène Larraufie is currently Program Director in the Drug Discovery Department of Almirall (headquarters in Barcelona, Spain). In addition to leading discovery programs from Hit finding activities to Clinical Candidates, Marie is establishing a chemical biology team at Almirall to support new target identification, target validation and phenotypic screening activities, as well as the exploration of new modalities. With a prime focus on targeted protein degradation, Marie is leading several collaborative efforts between Almirall and academic teams to explore the potential of bifunctional degraders and glue degraders for immune-inflammatory skin diseases. Prior to Almirall, Marie worked as a team leader in the Chemical Genetics group of Novartis Institute for Biomedical research (Cambridge, USA). Her team was focused on phenotypic screening, target identification and exploration of novel modalities such as molecular glues, prodrugs, and RNA binders for a variety of indications. Marie completed her graduate research in Bioorganic Chemistry at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, followed by postdoctoral research in Chemical Biology at Columbia University (NY, USA) in the group of Prof. Brent Stockwell.