Editors & Contributors

About the Editors

Dr. Katerina Leftheris has led programs in small molecule and peptide discovery and development up to Phase II clinical studies for the last 27 years. Katerina and her teams have advanced 15 compounds into development spanning many molecular targets across oncology, immunology, neuroscience, fibrosis & metabolic disease.  Two drugs have advanced to Ph2b/3 clinical trials.  Katerina has held multiple leadership roles in large pharma and biotech. While at Celgene, as Chemistry site-head, she helped to initiate degrader and molecular glue efforts and was instrumental in introducing DEL for screening.  At Pliant as VP of Chemistry, she was a key contributor for the to bexotegrast discovery & development and other integrin inhibitors for the treatment of pulmonary and liver fibrosis as well as cancer.  Katerina spent her first 15 years in the industry at Bristol-Myers Squibb as a medicinal chemist. There she led programs and teams to advance multiple small molecule clinical candidates in the oncology and immunology space. Katerina is currently an adjunct professor of Chemistry at Stony Brook University and a scientific advisor. To date, Katerina has over 90 patents and 50 publications. 

Dr. Nicholas Meanwell completed a 40-year career with Bristol Myers Squibb in 2022 after having led drug discovery programs in the cardiovascular, neurosciences and virology therapeutic areas.  This work resulted in the advancement of 33 clinical candidates including MaxiPost, the HIV-1 attachment inhibitor Rukobia, the HCV NS5A inhibitor Daklinza, the HCV NS3 protease inhibitors BMS-605339 and Sunvepra, and the HCV NS5B Xymency.  Nick has authored/co-authored more than 350 publications and has presented more than 270 invited lectures. He also has 145 issued Patents.  Nick was the recipient of the Portoghese Medicinal Chemistry Lectureship and was inducted into the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame (2015).  He was the co-recipient of “Heroes of Chemistry” Awards sponsored by the ACS in 2017 and 2023 and was the recipient of the Alfred Burger Award in Medicinal Chemistry (2022).  He received the Antonín Holý Award (2024) and the Scientific Achievement in Drug Discovery and Development Award from ASPET (2025).  He was appointed a Fellow of the ACS in 2022.  Nick received his Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield with Dr. D. Neville Jones and completed a post-doc with Carl Johnson at Wayne State.

Dr. Mike Myers has been in the pharma industry contributing to the discovery and development of new drugs for 38 years.  In the first half of his journey, Mike led drug discovery teams for cancer, CNS, Infectious and cardiovascular diseases contributing as an inventor on more than 35 patents. Mike also led efforts in evaluating new lead generation technologies, predictive ADME, tox and computational chemistry approaches and led a significant effort at Lilly to optimize Lead generation processes.  For the last half of his career spent at Eli Lilly & Company, Mike moved to take a leadership role as a VP in Proj. Mgmt leading the project management professionals responsible for development up to the end of Phase 2.  For the last 16+ years Mike has led due diligence activities associated with licensing, partnering and acquisitions.  In 2017, Mike partnered with Professor Emeritus Dr. Don Abraham (deceased 2021) as the consulting editor to deliver the 8-volume 8th edition of Burger’s in 2021.   Since 2024, Mike has been joint editor with Drs. Kent Stewart, Nick Meanwell and most recently Kat Leftheris.

Dr. Donald J. Abraham served as editor in chief of the 6th edition of Burger's Medicinal Chemistry. He was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy and Director of the Institute for Structural Biology and Drug Discovery at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was the founder of Allos Therapeutics Inc., and the co-founder of EduSoft LC, a software company that specializes in Drug Design software. He was appointed by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia to be a member of the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Commission and was a member of the Governor's Virginia Research and Technology Advisory Commission 2001-2004. Dr. Abraham was the general chair of the American Chemical Society's 26th National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium held in Richmond, June 14-18, 1998. He was awarded The Virginia Section of the American Chemical Society Industrial Innovator for 2001 (Biomedical Software), the Virginia Biotechnology Association's Educator of the Year Award 2000 and Virginia's Outstanding Scientist of the Year for 1999. Dr. Abraham's research is interdisciplinary and focuses on structure based drug design including X-ray crystallography, molecular modeling, synthetic medicinal chemistry, and structure function studies involving allosteric proteins. Targeted therapeutic areas of research include: Sickle Cell Anemia, radiation oncology, ischemic cardiovascular diseases, stroke, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Primary areas of drug discovery revolve around allosteric proteins (hemoglobin, P53 and other non-heme proteins) that may be regulated by synthetic allosteric modulators to treat the disease states mentioned above. Such studies have advanced two molecules into nine separate clinical trials; a phase one safety study to treat Sickle Cell Anemia and seven phase one and two studies for treatment of brain tumors receiving cranial radiation, for use in cardiopulmonary bypass surgery and for treatment of chronic effort angina. The later molecule, RSR-13 is now in phase three clinical trials for treatment of metastatic brain cancer.