WEHI Postgraduate Seminar Series hosted by the Education Committee
 

Dr Bekky Feltham and Associate Professor Bernhard Lechtenberg
Laboratory Heads – Ubiquitin Signalling division, WEHI
 

From Bench to Biotech: Building a Translational Pipeline from Ubiquitin Biology
 

Davis Auditorium

Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

In this seminar, we share our journey from fundamental Ubiquitin research to founding Ternarx, WEHI’s targeted protein degradation spin-out. Drawing on over a decade of work in ubiquitin biology and E3 ligase discovery, Bekky will discuss how platform technologies like dTAG/NanoTAC, TissueSAFE and the E3-ome were built and are now driving a translational pipeline in industry. Bernhard will outline the key stages of small molecule drug discovery and how medicinal chemistry, protein biochemistry and biology are integrated to identify and validate hits and develop them into drug leads. Alongside the science, we’ll reflect candidly on the decisions, pivots and partnerships that shaped this path and share honest insights for postgrads considering careers that straddle academia and biotech.

Bekky Feltham is a Laboratory Head in the Ubiquitin Signalling Division at WEHI and Co-Founder and Target Validation Program Lead at Ternarx, WEHI’s targeted protein degradation spin-out. With over 16 years in ubiquitin biology and E3 ligase discovery, she pioneered the NanoTAC PROTAC system, established dTAG at WEHI, and built TissueSAFE and the E3-ome – the first expert-curated compendium of human E3 ligases. Her work bridges fundamental discovery and therapeutic translation, and has supported degrader validation across 24 targets in collaboration with 30+ research groups nationally.

Bernhard Lechtenberg is a Laboratory Head in WEHI’s Ubiquitin Signalling division and Co-founder and Structural Biology and Biochemistry Lead at Ternarx. Bernhard’s research group combines biochemistry, structural biology and molecular biology to investigate the catalytic mechanisms and biological functions of E3 ubiquitin ligases and utilise them for drug discovery. His team at Ternarx successfully developed small molecule screening pipelines for novel E3 ligases and target proteins and provided critical datasets to guide structure-based drug discovery.

All welcome!