Madeline M. Dekarske, Ph.D.

Maddie is a synthetic organic chemist, whose doctoral research focused on the synthesis and biological investigation of membrane-targeting antimicrobials and antibiotic resistance.

She then joined EMD Serono (Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) as a medicinal chemist, where she worked in the degrader landscape. During her time at EMD Serono, Maddie synthesized and designed new heterobifunctional degraders from an active series with the goal of multiparametric optimization: improving degradation potency, thermodynamic solubility, and metabolic stability in order to achieve oral bioavailability for an immunology target. She also incorporated diverse E3 ligase ligands to expand outside of thalidomide-based ligands and designed synthetic targets with various exit vectors from ternary complex models generated by computational chemistry.

Additionally, Maddie provided concept support via investigating new degrader patent literature biweekly and exploring the new E3 ligase ligands described therein.

Maddie’s graduate work is published in ACS Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters.