Dr. Ammar Khalid is a Senior Resident in the Department of Pharmacology at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College & Hospitals, Aligarh Muslim University, India. He holds an MD in Pharmacology. His research focuses on clinical Pharmacology, nanomedicine, and anticancer drug development, with a particular interest in nanoparticulate drug delivery systems for improving therapeutic efficacy and safety.

Dr. Xiaolei Zhang is a Professor at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University. He has been repeatedly recognized as one of the world’s top 2% most influential scientists. Dr. Zhang holds several key leadership roles in professional societies, including Executive Council Member of the Guangdong Pharmacological Society, Vice Chair of its Marine Drug Pharmacology Committee, Vice Chair of the Experimental Medicine Committee of the Guangdong Association of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Vice Chair of the Liver Disease Diagnosis, Treatment & Clinical Research Committee of the Guangdong Clinical Medical Society, and Vice Chair of the Pediatric Hematology–Oncology Expert Committee of the Guangdong Pharmaceutical Society. His research focuses on innovative drug discovery and pharmacological studies. His team has identified novel molecular targets implicated in cancer recurrence, metastasis, drug resistance, and blinding ocular diseases—with a particular emphasis on historically “undruggable” targets.

Jibira Yakubu is a PhD candidate in Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His work focuses on steroidogenesis, drug discovery, and developing selective CYP17A1 inhibitors for castration-resistant prostate cancer. Jibira is a recipient of the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship and several international travel awards. He is a student member of ASPET and the recipient of ASPET Young Scientist Travel Award to attend the 20th World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology.

Dr. Mariangela Tamburello is a researcher at the University of Brescia, within the Department of Molecular and Translational Medicine, Section of Pharmacology, where she holds a PhD and is engaged in translational and preclinical research in oncological pharmacology. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of cancer and the identification of novel therapeutic strategies, with particular attention to adrenocortical carcinoma and testicular cancer. She has spent two years abroad conducting scientific collaborations in Würzburg, Germany, and in the United States (Aurora, Colorado). Dr. Tamburello has contributed to several peer-reviewed publications and collaborates within multidisciplinary research teams aimed at advancing targeted cancer therapies.

Dr. Mirco Masi is a post-doc researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Genoa, Italy. His research focuses on targeting DNA repair vulnerabilities in cancer, particularly components of the homologous recombination (HR) pathway such as RAD51–BRCA2 and RAD52. His research intersects computational modeling, structure-guided drug discovery, and experimental validation to identify and characterize both nucleic acid–based aptamers and small-molecule inhibitors. His work involves screening candidate compounds and investigating their biological activity, functional effects, and mechanisms of action in cellular models of HR proficiency and deficiency. He is particularly interested in exploiting synthetic lethality to expand therapeutic strategies beyond current PARP inhibitor approaches. Dr. Masi is the recipient of a AIRC Foundation for Cancer Research NGO funded postdoctoral fellowship for the project “Synthetic Lethality in BRCAness: exploring innovative mechanisms linked to RAD52,” aimed at developing novel strategies to target DNA repair dependencies in cancer.