Computational Chemist

My name is Laurent Hoffer, and I am a French computational chemist. I received my PhD in chemoinformatics in 2013 from the University of Strasbourg (Varnek Lab), under the supervision of Dragos Horvath and Jean-Paul Renaud, in collaboration with NovAliX. My doctoral research focused on the docking of small organic compounds and the co-development of a conformational sampling tool (S4MPLE). I then joined the Cancer Research Centre of Marseille (CRCM, France) as a postdoctoral fellow in the Morelli/Collette team. The group focused on protein–protein interactions in cancer signaling and epigenetics, as well as their modulation using small organic molecules. At CRCM, I developed and validated molecular modeling methods for structure-guided optimization of compounds using chemistry-driven growing and linking strategies (DOTS, CovaDOTS). Since 2021, I have been working at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR, Canada) in the Drug Discovery Department, led by Dr. Al-Awar. In this role, I focus on computer-aided development of molecular probes at the interface with medicinal chemists and biologists. I have also been actively involved in the development of potent inhibitors targeting diverse proteins, including protein kinases and WDR domain–containing proteins.