György Kéri


György Kéri was a Hungarian biochemist, professor and Doctor of Biological Sciences. His major field of research was signal transduction therapy and he participated in the development of novel drug discovery technologies and drug candidates that entered the clinical development process.

Biography

He studied chemistry at the Eötvös Loránd University, where he graduated in 1973 and received a PhD in biochemistry in 1976. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, San Francisco in 1978-1979. As a visiting scientist he returned to the United States 19 times for various time periods on the bases of a National Science Foundation grant and joint research programs with University of California, San Francisco and Sugen. From the Hungarian Academy of Sciences he received Candidatus of Biological Sciences in 1982 and Doctor of Biological Sciences in 1994. In 1997 he became Dr. Med. Habil. of the Semmelweis University.
He was married to Mária Kenéz, has two children and a granddaughter Luca.

History

György Kéri was an internationally recognized expert on signal transduction therapy and personalized therapy. His pioneering work focused on the utilization of signal transduction therapy approach in the pharmaceutical research. He achieved outstanding results in the research and development of peptide hormone derivatives and kinase inhibitors as antitumor agents. He was involved in the development of a signal-inhibiting somatostatin peptide compound, which reached Phase II clinical trials, and SU101, which reached Phase III clinical trials.
Vichem – the company he co-founded in 1999 – developed a kinase inhibitor library, and a hit finding technology called Nested Chemical Library™ technology and an allosteric library for inhibiting protein-protein interactions. He has developed at Vichem the DriverHit Library™ for inhibiting the signaling pathways activated by cancer driver genes or mutated tumor suppressor genes.
He also participated with German researchers in the development of a new proteomic technology which makes it possible to identify unknown targets in the signal transduction network or the interacting enzymes of the metabolom.
Over a hundred international patents or patent applications can be linked to his name, while he is a co-author of more than 250 publications in international scientific journals and several book chapters.

Membership of scientific organizations