Day 1 – Wednesday 15 April
09:45 – 10:15	Registration and Refreshments
10:15 – 10:30	Welcome and Introduction: Professor Antony Galione (Oxford, UK)
Session 1	Organelles and Disease (Chair: Dr  Margarida Ruas, Oxford, UK)
10:30 – 11:00	Professor Frances Platt (Oxford, UK)	Talk title: TBC
11:00 – 11:30	Professor Andrea Ballabio (Naples, Italy)	Lysosomal signalling in metabolic adaptation and tumorigenesis
11:30 – 11:45	Oral Communication 1
11:45 – 12:00	Oral Communication 2
12:00 – 12:30	Dr Emily Eden (UCL, UK)	Talk title: TBC
12:30 – 13:00	Dr Nuno Raimundo (Penn State, USA)	Targeting signaling elicited by mitochondrial and lysosomal defects
13:00 – 14:00	Lunch and Poster Viewing
Session 2	Emerging techniques for studying drug effects on organelles (Chair: Professor Sandip Patel UCL, UK)
14:00 – 14:30	Professor Teresa Alonso (Valladolid, Spain)	Talk title: TBC
14:30 – 15:00	Dr Markus Rapedius (Nanion, Munich, Germany)	Approaching organelles with high-throughput electrophysiology Methods to allow early Drug Discovery from native Lysosomes
15:00 – 15:15	Oral Communication 3
15:15 – 15:30	Oral Communication 4
15:30 – 15:50	Partner Session
15:50 – 16:20	Refreshment Break
16:20 – 16:50	Dr Anthony Morgan (Oxford, UK)	Talk title: TBC
16:50 – 17:05	Oral Communication 5
17:05 – 17:20	Oral Communication 6
17:20 – 17:50	Dr Katherina Durr (Oxford, UK)	Talk title: TBC
17:50 – 17:55	Closing Remarks
Conference Close

 

Day 2 – Thursday 16 April
08:45 – 09:10	Registration and refreshments
09:10 – 09:15	Welcome to day 2
Session 3	Drugging organelle targets (Chair: Professor Grant Churchill  Oxford ,UK)
09:15 – 09:45	Dr Cristina Mammucari (Padua, Italy)	Talk title: TBC
09:45 – 10:15	Professor Christian Grimm (Munich, Germany)	Endolysosomal cation channels as drug  targets
10:15 – 10:30	Oral Communication 7
10:30 – 10:45	Oral Communication 8
10:45 – 11:05	Partner Session
11:05 – 11:35	Refreshment Break
11:35 – 12:05	Professor Marc Freichel (Heidelburg, Germany)	Talk title: TBC
12:05 – 12:20	Oral Communication 9
12:20 – 12:35	Oral Communication 10
12:35 – 13:05	Professor Jonathan Marchant (Wisconsin, USA)	Talk title: TBC
13:05 – 13:30	Closing remarks and Prizes
Conference Close

 

Professor Christian Grimm 

University of Oxford



Talk title: Endolysosomal cation channels as drug targets

Biography: Christian Grimm is Professor of Organelle Biology and Pharmacology at the Department of Pharmacology, University of Oxford, UK (50%) and -Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Walther-Straub-Institute
(WSI) of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Medical Faculty, Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich, Germany (50%)

In addition, since 2022 Christian is Head of the Department of Pharmacology at the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology (ITMP) and Immunology, Infection and Pandemic Research (IIP) in Munich/Penzberg.

Christian has been working in the field of ion channels, in particular TRP channels for more than 20 years, starting as a PhD Student (Dr. rer. nat.) at the Free University (FU) of Berlin, Germany, followed by Postdoctoral Research Fellowships at Harvard University and Stanford University, USA (2004-2009). In 2009 Christian joined pharmaceutical industry (Pfizer Ltd., UK) as a Principal Scientist working on TRP channels as targets to treat neuropathic pain. In 2011, Christian returned to Germany and to academia as a group leader in pharmacology at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy of the LMU Munich. Since then he has focused his research on endo-lysosomal ion channels, in particular TRPML channels and two-pore channels (TPCs), resulting in several high-profile publications in PNAS, EMBO J., Nature Commun., Nature Protoc., and Science. For his work he received several awards, the Ernst-Reuter Award of the Free University Berlin (2005), the NCL Foundation Award Hamburg (2016), and the Care for Rare Award of the LMU Munich Childrens' Hospital (2017).

Christian also holds a PhD (Dr. phil.) in Philosophy in addition to his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in Pharmacology.

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Professor Andrea Ballabio

Emeritus Director, TIGEM



Talk title: Lysosomal signalling in metabolic adaptation and tumorigenesis

Biography: Dr. Ballabio obtained his M.D. degree at the University of Naples, Italy, where he completed his residency in Pediatrics. He was then post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics in Naples and at Guy’s hospital in London UK. He then moved to the USA where he was Associate Professor and Co-director of the Human Genome Center at the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. In 1994 he became the founding director of the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM) in Italy and served as TIGEM director for 30 years. In 1998 he became President of the European Society of Human Genetics. He is currently Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Naples “Federico II”, Group Leader at TIGEM, and Visiting Professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas USA, and at the University of Oxford, UK. He was the recipient of three 5 year-Advanced Grants of the European Research Council (ERC), in 2009, 2015, and 2022. In 2016 he won the Louis-Jeantet prize for Medicine in Geneva, Switzerland. He is Co-Founder of CASMA Therapeutics. He is an EMBO member and former member of the EMBO council. He has authored over 400 publications in international peer-reviewed journals. He was awarded by the President of Italy the Honorary Titles of "Commendatore" in 2007 and "Grande Ufficiale" of the Italian Republic in 2021. He was the 2025 winner of the Beth Levine, M.D. prize in Autophagy Research.

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Dr Markus Rapedius

Senior Scientist, Nanion Technologies



Talk title: Approaching organelles with high-throughput electrophysiology Methods to allow early Drug Discovery from native Lysosomes 

Biography: PhD/Post-Doc in Biophysics and ion channel research at the University of Jena (2003-2010).

Own Research Group “Structure, Gating and Regulation of K+ channels” at the Physiological Institute at the University of Jena (2010-2014).

Team Leader and Principal Investigator at Nanion Technologies leading internal research programs focused on advancing applications of their high-throughput automated patch-clamp equipment (2014-now).

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More details about our speakers will be available soon.

Professor Grant Churchill

Professor of Chemical Pharmacology, University of Oxford



Biography: Grant Churchill is a professor of chemical pharmacology at the University of Oxford, Tutor in Medicine at New College and a founding scientist with the startup IntraBio. He delights in both research and teaching. His research in cell signalling and drug discovery has produced chemical tools, publications in glamour journals and an FDA-approved drug. He obtained a BSc in Agriculture and MSc in Crop Science from the University of Saskatchewan, and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University Minnesota. He then moved to the University of Oxford in 1997 and can’t seem to leave.

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More details about our chairs will be available soon.

Abstract Submissions Now Open! 

 
We are pleased to announce that abstract submissions are now open. If you would like to present your work, please submit your abstract before the deadline of Friday 13th February by 3pm (London, GMT).  
 
Before submitting, please ensure you have read the abstract submission guidelines carefully. Submissions that do not follow the guidelines may not be considered. 
 
Please note that you must be registered for the event in order to present your work. 
 
We will review all submissions promptly and aim to notify authors of the outcome in March. 
 

Confirmed Partners

 

Oria Bioscience

ORIA Bioscience™ provides for the first time ready-to-use high-quality organelles preparations compatible with high throughput screening (HTS) Drug Discovery platforms. We empower and 
accelerate therapeutical discoveries, allowing pharmaceutic companies to conduct their processes directly on organelles (lysosomes, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum). Our products, LYSO-Prep™ and MITO-Prep™, bring together industrial scale, physiological fidelity, and true ready-to-use simplicity, making drug discovery moving from a cell-based vision to an organelle-based reality. Our organelles are customizable for all therapeutic areas and enhance assays results in terms of relevance, precision and reproducibility. Our fully functional and storable organelles, extracted and 
sorted by our patented microfluidic process, open the way for more accurate Hit-To-Lead and Lead optimization testing, offering efficacy, crucial for successful screening processes and decision-making in Drug Discovery. 



Exciting news! Our new partnership brochure is now available, please contact partnerships@bps.ac.uk for more information.