Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel Inhibition by µ-Conotoxins

Irina Vetter is a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Queensland. She is also the group leader of the Sensory Neuropharmacology Lab, an NHMRC Research Fellow, and the Director of the Centre for Pain Research at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. She completed her Ph.D. studies at the University of Queensland in 2007. Her research interests lie in the fields of peripheral pain mechanisms, target identification and analgesic drug discovery. She investigates the contribution of ion channels to sensory neuronal physiology using highly subtype-selective toxins isolated from venomous animals, to develop novel analgesics with improved efficacy and tolerability. She has 187 publications with 7973 citations and an h-index of 44 (Scopus, 22 November 2023).

Christina I Schroeder is a Senior Fellow in the department of Peptide Therapeutics at Genentech Inc. She obtained her MSc degree in Chemistry at the University of Kalmar, Sweden in 1999 and completed her PhD studies in Pharmacology at the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2003. She has carried out postdoctoral training at Scripps Research Institute, the University of Queensland, and the University of New South Wales, Australia, and led an independent research group at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience between 2014 and 2020, focusing her research on biodiscovery and peptide engineering of venom-derived bioactive peptides for the development of novel peptide-based drug leads for pain and cancer. In 2020 she was named a Stadtman Investigator in the Chemical Biology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, MD, USA and in 2022 she moved her research group to Genentech, where she leads a group focusing on the discovery and development of disulfide-constrained peptides. She was the recipient of the inaugural Lord Mayor Convention Trailblazer grant in 2018, and she was awarded the prestigious Treager Award from the Australian Peptide Association in 2019, the Federal Technology Transfer Award and the Toxins Outstanding Toxicologist Award for Women in 2021. She has 91 publications with 2413 citations and an h-index of 28 (Scopus, 22 November 2023).