The 2023 annual Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology Symposium will be Tuesday, Aug. 8, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Student Life Center. The event is sponsored by Ancora Innovation through Vanderbilt’s partnership with Deerfield Management. Registration, which is required to attend the event, ends July 21. 
Hosted by VICB and the Chemical Biology Association of Students, the symposium features presentations from Vanderbilt’s students and faculty, as well as a keynote lecture from a distinguished scientist. This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. John Yates III, from Scripps Research, who will discuss “probing the in vivo structure of mutant CFTR.”
Other speakers will include Richard Caprioli, director of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center, Lars Plate, professor of biological sciences and chemistry, Seth Zost, a research fellow from the Citation Award–winning Crowe and Carnahan Lab, and Katherine Stefanski, a postdoctoral research scientist from the Citation Award–winning Sanders Lab. Matthew Nelson, vice president of genetics and genomics at Deerfield Discovery and Development, will also speak.
This year’s Richard Armstrong Prize for Research Excellence winner will be announced at the event. Participants can also expect to engage in a panel discussion titled “AI and Big Data—You Can’t Ignore It,” attend poster and oral presentations, and join in a reception.
The event’s sponsor, Ancora Innovation, is a collaboration between Vanderbilt University and Deerfield Management that was launched in 2018. Ancora supports Vanderbilt’s innovative life science research and leverages Deerfield’s expertise in accelerating state-of-the-art drug development.
Under the partnership, Deerfield has committed up to $65 million to support promising Vanderbilt life sciences research, provide operational support and make additional capital investments into any spin-offs that emerge from Ancora projects. The collaboration aims to change the paradigm of drug development and establish novel therapeutics to cure life-altering disease.