Marina Nelen, PhD

Marina Nelen, PhD, joined Foghorn Therapeutics in 2018. She brings more than 20 years of experience in small molecule drug discovery from assay development and screening to Lead Optimization (LO).

Prior to joining Foghorn, Marina was a Principal Scientist and lead of the sitewide screening team at Johnson & Johnson (J&J). In this position, she designed screening strategies for discovery projects in multiple disease areas such as oncology, cytomegalovirus, immunology, and neuroscience. Marina implemented effective high throughput screening and hit validation approaches and enabled robotic automation. Taking advantage of the high throughput capabilities, she established highly efficient compound profiling and demonstrated continuous success in progressing leads to new molecular entities. Marina has extensive experience in drugging protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and other challenging targets using various approaches including mass spectrometry, DNA encoded libraries, and fragments. As an enthusiastic researcher and an active member of the scientific community, she served as a Vice Chair of LRIG, a local automation and innovation group.

Marina received a PhD from the Lomonosov Moscow State University under the direction of Anatoly Yatsimirsky, and then completed her postdoctoral training in biochemistry and biophysics at SUNY Buffalo. During her career, Marina has authored and coauthored 28 publications, 4 patents, and has received numerous awards.