Join Dr. GPCR at Discovery on Target 2026 in Boston, where GPCR science runs right through the heart of modern drug hunting. If you work in drug discovery or biotech, Boston in the fall is where the conversation happens. Discovery on Target returns September 28 to October 1, 2026, and this year GPCR science is woven into the broader Lead Generation Strategies program, sitting alongside covalent chemistry, DNA-encoded libraries, biophysics, and direct-to-biology. For us, that is a feature, not a footnote. GPCRs do not live in isolation, and neither do the people working on them. Seeing GPCR programs share a room with the newest hit-finding and lead-generation approaches is exactly how the field moves forward. Our founder, Yamina Berchiche, PhD, is honored to be chairing the Targeting GPCRs session on Wednesday, September 30. In the run-up to the meeting, she sat down with several of the scientists presenting and teaching this year to hear what they are bringing to Boston. Speaker Spotlight Ahead of the meeting, we sat down with four of the scientists presenting and teaching in the GPCR track this year. Here are our conversations. Evan O'Brien, PhD, Johns Hopkins University Dr. O'Brien runs a lab at Johns Hopkins that blends cryo-electron microscopy with protein dynamics to build something closer to a movie of GPCR allostery than a single snapshot. His talk digs into the molecular basis of partial agonism at the mu opioid receptor, using mitragynine pseudoindoxyl and a newly identified allosteric pocket to tune signaling like a rheostat. In a result the field will enjoy, his team solved the same molecule bound in both the active and inactive states of the receptor, and the weak partial agonist still delivered meaningful pain relief in a mouse model. A great example of why what happens in the animal matters as much as what happens in the in vitro assay. Hailong Zhang, PhD, Shanghai Yogar Therapeutics Dr. Zhang is a structural biologist with more than two decades in small molecule research across oncology and metabolic disease. At Discovery on Target he presents YJ-015, a G protein biased APJ agonist developed as an adjuvant to GLP-1 therapy. The idea is elegant: GLP-1 agonists drive rapid weight loss but can take muscle along with the fat, and YJ-015 is designed to preserve muscle while the weight comes off. It is a timely look at how receptor pharmacology can sharpen one of the most talked-about therapeutic areas in the field. Kris Borzilleri, Pfizer A familiar face from last year, Kris Borzilleri is a longtime discovery scientist at Pfizer who moved from soluble proteins into the membrane protein world, bringing a deep biophysics toolkit with her. At Discovery on Target she is giving a talk on an NMR fragment screen against an orphan GPCR, describing how her team navigated hit follow-up to drive down compound potency. She is also co-teaching a short course on biophysical methods for GPCRs, covering protein NMR, SPR, and whole-cell SPR microscopy. Catch her on both the podium and in the classroom. Dr. Terry Kenakin, UNC and Head Instructor at Terry's Corner Dr. Kenakin is teaching a brand-new full-day short course in Boston on Monday, September 28: "The End Game: From Lead Optimization to Drug Candidate Selection." Six hours of instruction centered on the part of discovery where much of the attrition happens, once you actually have a compound in hand. Expect deep, practical treatment of affinity and efficacy, allosteric protein function, early safety, ADME, kinetics, and real case studies of compounds that looked promising and failed in the clinic, with a clear eye on why. As Dr. Kenakin puts it, the goal is to translate moving biological readouts into hard chemical terms that hold up and predict what a molecule will do in people. Why Dr. GPCR Is in This Conversation At Dr. GPCR, our mission is simple: connect the GPCR community, share knowledge, and accelerate innovation. Chairing the GPCR session at Discovery on Target is an extension of what we do every day, spotlighting strong science across academia and industry and bringing the people behind it together. We are a nonprofit, and we have spent six years building a trusted, science-first space for this community. Stepping into the GPCR track at Discovery on Target is part of that work. Inside the GPCR Track This Year The GPCR content is concentrated on Wednesday, September 30, and it spans an unusually wide slice of the field: Antifibrotic and anti-inflammatory targets, including GPR68 Biased ligand discovery and orphan receptors such as GPR75 Designer partial agonism at the mu opioid receptor Small molecule approaches to obesity through GIPR Muscle-sparing strategies for GLP-1-driven weight loss through APJ Structural biology of the opioid receptors using single molecule FRET and cryo-EM Fragment-based discovery for orphan GPCRs Membrane mimetics and how the lipid environment shapes receptor behavior There is also a morning roundtable on modern GPCR-targeted drug discovery, tackling which hit-finding strategies are actually delivering tractable GPCR leads, where AI and machine learning genuinely change the workflow, and which functional readouts teams trust enough to make go or no-go decisions. Keep Learning with Terry's Corner If you cannot get enough of Dr. Kenakin's teaching, Terry's Corner is our room where he breaks down receptor pharmacology, functional selectivity, and ligand bias in ways you can apply directly to your work. You can also sign up for the free weekly Kenakin brief delivered to your inbox at https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/terry-corner#signuptc. We have GPCR-focused courses coming this fall as well, so stay tuned. Join Us in Boston Discovery on Target, Boston, MA. September 28 to October 1, 2026 Track: Lead Generation Strategies, with GPCR sessions on Wednesday, September 30 Registration and full agenda Use code GPCR26200 for $200 off the current registration rate as part of our collaboration with Discovery on Target. Let's connect, let's debate, and let's keep moving GPCR drug discovery forward, together.

At a conference booth in 2018, a researcher arrived with a problem that had already cost him months. He had engineered a mouse to make none of a particular receptor, a clean negative control, and yet several commercial antibodies still lit up the tissue, staining a protein that was not there. He had run every experiment correctly. What he lacked was any way to know, before he started, whether the reagent could be trusted. It is a quietly common story wherever people rely on GPCR antibodies, and it is where our conversation with the GeneTex team, Dr. Alexander Ball and Dr. Chia-Yi Lin, began. A word that admits what it doesn’t know Much of that trust problem, Dr. Ball suggested, begins with a single word. We tend to say a GPCR antibody is “validated,” as if validation were a box that could be checked and closed. Dr. Ball prefers a different word, characterization, and the distinction is not pedantic. Validation, to me, is asymptotic, it’s infinite. You can keep validating forever. But you can characterize an antibody: under these conditions, it does this. Characterization is the honest version. It states what an antibody does and does not do, in which application and against which control, and it shows the data behind each claim. It also leaves room for a truth every bench scientist knows: no reagent is ever finished being understood. For a class of reagents as demanding as GPCR antibodies, that humility turns out to be the point. Why GPCR antibodies punish you early Good GPCR antibodies are notoriously hard to make, and the reasons stack up before an animal is ever immunized. The receptors themselves often sit at very low abundance, so even finding a tissue that reliably presents one is work. Much of their surface is buried in the membrane, leaving little for an antibody to reach. And within a receptor family the sequences run so close, two chemokine receptors can share more than three-quarters of their identity, that choosing the wrong fragment to immunize against sinks the effort from the start. As Dr. Ball put it, you can be “doomed before you even shoot a rabbit.” The receptor that taught GeneTex this most sharply was LGR5, a marker of adult stem cells that matters across several cancers, and one that defeated a dozen commercial antibodies before the company’s own recombinant clones began to hold up. The shift to recombinant monoclonals is what changed the odds: because such an antibody is defined by its sequence, the clone that works today behaves the same way years from now, without the batch-to-batch drift that has quietly undermined so much drug discovery. The bar, made visible: GeneTex’s GPRC5A antibody gives a clean signal in wild-type cells (left) that disappears in the CRISPR knockout (right). Figure from the GeneTex webinar. Two ways into the same problem What gives the conversation its warmth is that neither guest set out to spend a career on antibodies. Dr. Ball came to them by way of medicine, an MD, training in internal medicine, then a turn to the research bench, and learned only there how unforgiving these reagents can be, in a lab where the same immunization could yield one superb antibody and one useless one. “You really don’t understand antibodies until you’re in the industry,” he said, and he meant it as a confession as much as a claim. Dr. Lin arrived from a different door. She trained as a stem-cell biologist, finished a PhD, and then followed a love of explaining science into a role few of her peers would have predicted, learning the craft, in her telling, partly by having her early drafts returned covered in red ink. She also carried a grievance that made the work personal: during her own PhD she had built a knockout mouse and could never find an antibody that gave an honest signal against it. She knew, first-hand, exactly the kind of wasted months the researcher at that booth was describing. Handing the question to the room The conviction underneath the science is an unusual one for a company: the real experts, Dr. Ball and Dr. Lin insist, are not the vendor but the researchers who run these systems every day. So rather than declare their antibodies finished, GeneTex has been putting them directly into the community’s hands, free vials, shipping covered, and asking for the honest verdict, good or bad. A reagent that fails in someone’s lab, they argue, is more useful to hear about than one that quietly succeeds and is never reported. It is a way of building a GPCR antibody catalog out loud, alongside the people who feel the cost of getting it wrong. What it means to know a reagent There is something bracing about a company that would rather say “here is what we have so far” than “validated.” It treats a reagent the way good science treats any claim, as provisional, held open to the next result. Whether a catalog can really be built this way, in the open and with the community as co-author, is still an unfinished question. But it reframes a familiar one. The next time a datasheet promises more than it delivers, the useful thing to ask may not be whether a GPCR antibody is validated, but how well, and by whom, it has been characterized. Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Ball and Dr. Lin Watch the webinar recording with Dr. Ball

I have been thinking about this event since the moment it ended. On April 29, GPCR scientists walked into Pressed Cafe in Boston's Prudential Center and did something that doesn't happen enough in our field: they just talked. No presentations. No panels. No agenda. Just people who care deeply about GPCR science, in one room, having the kind of conversations that usually happen in hallways or never at all. This was the first Dr. GPCR Happy Hour of 2026, and it reminded me exactly why we started this community. The GPCR Happy Hour Room What struck me first was the range. We had trainees and CSOs standing next to each other, talking like peers. That is not an accident, it is the goal. Dr. GPCR exists to democratize this field, to create spaces where the most junior scientist in the room can have a real conversation with the most senior one, and where what you work on matters more than your title. Take a look at this little montage we created. The Colorful Name Tags Forty-eight hours before the event I ordered a set of colorful name tags on Amazon. Not because they were colorful but because I remembered that the ones I have at home are at least 15 years old. I picked the pack that was the first at the top of the list with the best reviews and fast delivery. They arrived the day before the Happy Hour. No system, no color coding, just a pile of options and the invitation to pick whichever one you wanted. These colorful name tags became the unexpected hit of the night. People were drawn to them immediately. Conversations started around the name tag table before anyone had even found their drink. Something about the color and the informality signaled: this is not that kind of event. You can relax. You belong here. At some point during the evening, I noticed a family at a nearby table checking out our check-in table. These were regular restaurant guests who had nothing to do with GPCR science. Their kids had joined in to make themselves name tags which I encouraged by telling them that they are welcome to take more than one. It is one of the things from the whole night that we couldn't have planned. Even the room around us caught the energy. This was the result. The Space A word about Pressed Cafe. We could not have asked for a better venue or a better team. The general manager helped us set up personally, and the space felt warm and welcoming from the moment we walked in. It felt like a place that wanted a community event to happen inside it. We will be going back in the fall on September 30th. Same venue, same city, same format. The People Who Made It Possible The Dr. GPCR Happy Hour is free to every scientist who walks in. That is only possible because of the co-hosts who believe in what we are building. Thank you to NanoImaging Services, Revvity, EuroscreenFast, and Montana Molecular for making the Boston Happy Hour happen. Dr. GPCR is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit, and your support goes directly into the room. The food, the drinks, the space, and the experience every scientist gets to walk away from without ever reaching for their wallet. The Conversation We Are Still Having Before the event, Giovanna Scapin, CSO of NanoImaging Services, sat down with me for a conversation about GPCR structural biology and what NIS is building for the community. That conversation is now on the Dr. GPCR YouTube channel, and I encourage you to watch it. It is exactly the kind of peer-to-peer exchange that this community exists to create. What Comes Next The next Dr. GPCR Happy Hour is coming in the fall, co-located with Discovery on Target in Boston, September 28 to October 1. If you want to be in the room, stay close — registration details will go out to the community first. And if the Boston Happy Hour is your first introduction to Dr. GPCR: welcome. This is what we do. Come find us in the fall. If you want to stay close to the science between events, the Dr. GPCR ecosystem is where the community lives year-round, the Weekly News, the Masterclass library, and the people https://www.ecosystem.drgpcr.com/gpcr-university

Join the scientific exchange in the room with the scientist, not watching from the audience. Access 200+ expert sessions at Dr. GPCR University. University / Live Masterclass Sessions In the room with the scientist, not watching from the audience. Live scientific exchanges with leading GPCR experts. Interactive, question-driven, frontier science. This isn't a lecture — it's a conversation with the people shaping GPCR discovery. Masterclass is included inDr. GPCR University Try it for 14 days Upcoming live sessions Your next Live Masterclass Session is waiting Each session focuses on a specific pharmacology or GPCR discovery topic, led by a recognized expert. Live Q&A means your questions get real answers. September 10, 2026 Dr. Davide Calebiro | University of Birmingham The spatiotemporal organization of GPCR signalling Receptor Signaling Details October 8, 2026 Dr. Marsha Pierce | Midewestern University Introduction to GLP-1 pharmacology Translational Pharmacology & Disease Models Details What makes this different? Not a lecture. Not a webinar. A scientific exchange. The Masterclass was created because the most valuable insights in GPCR science aren't captured in papers or conference talks. Scientist-to-scientist discussion Extended Q&A allows deeper exploration than typical presentations. You're engaging directly with the expert — not submitting a question to a moderator. Beyond conference time limits Topics are explored in greater depth than standard conference talks allow. Sessions focus on scientific reasoning, data interpretation, and real discovery problems. Focused audience of specialists Sessions bring together GPCR researchers, pharmacologists, and discovery scientists. The conversation stays at the right level because everyone in the room speaks the same scientific language. Every session recorded Can't make it live? Every Masterclass is recorded and available on demand in the library. Revisit the science anytime — over 200 sessions and growing. On-demand library 200+ expert sessions, available anytime Full recordings of every Masterclass session. Revisit the science at your pace — filter by category, level, or instructor. Explore all Recorded Masterclasses → The scientists Learn directly from world leaders in GPCR research Andrew Tobin Marsha Pierce Terry Hébert Bryan Roth Matteo Pavan Terry Kenakin Jakob Höppner Samuel Hoare Yamina Berchiche Kenneth Jacobson Sudarshan Rajagopal What scientists say? From the people in the room Dr. Hoare is very experienced in the field. What came as a pleasant surprise was how didactical and well-thought-out his course was—highly recommended. The really unexpected was that the Q&A sessions reached the highest level—beyond excellent. I am a convert! I will keep Dr. GPCR and the offered resources in my work sphere GPCR researcher Thank you for bringing this course with Dr. Kenakin. I wish Dr. GPCR the best for the sake of promoting more educational opportunities that are sorely needed in the field GPCR researcher The content had enough depth to satisfy the hunger for theory while being full of practical knowledge GPCR researcher The best pharmacology teacher teaming up with the best GPCR community platform to help train and inspire the next generation of scientists. Also super-valuable for those of us learning how to teach pharmacology GPCR researcher Dr. Hoare's extensive and elaborative explanation of the topics at hand was excellent and very digestible. Thoroughly enjoyed learning from him GPCR researcher Dr. Kenakin is a leading expert in the field. Aside from his vast experience in drug development, not to mention his extensive publication record, Dr. Kenakin is a masterful teacher and communicator. GPCR researcher The course was very practical and easily translatable to experiments that we could do in our own labs. It was clear that Dr. Hoare is very in touch with the technical and human challenges we encounter in our work GPCR researcher About the GPCR Masterclass What is a GPCR Masterclass? The GPCR Masterclass is a live scientific discussion with a leading expert in GPCR pharmacology, receptor biology, or drug discovery. Sessions focus on research questions, experimental interpretation, and emerging challenges in GPCR science. Are the sessions live or recorded? Who should join? Can I watch sessions later if I miss the live event? Can I watch sessions later if I miss the live event? How do I fit this in my schedule? What makes the Masterclass different from reading papers or textbooks? What happens during the live discussion? Masterclass is included in Dr. GPCR University Live sessions, 200+ on-demand recordings, plus premium intelligence, jobs, events, and a community of GPCR scientists — all in one place. See what it feels like for 14 days. Try University for 14 days — $50 Your professional home in GPCR science. $499/year after trial.

Articles News Get in Touch Item List This is a Title 01 This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. Read More This is a Title 02 This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. Read More This is a Title 03 This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. Read More Menu • Home • Services • About Ready to collaborate? Let’s talk about how I support GPCR discovery, pharmacology strategy, and cross-functional execution across biotech, VC, and CRO teams. Get in touch ©2023-2025 All rights reserved by FindYooour, LLC & Dr. GPCR Corp Proudly created with Wix.com Connect • LinkedIn • Podcast • Dr. GPCR Ecosystem

Advanced GPCR webinars for pharmacologists and biotech scientists. Live Q&A. Deep mechanistic insight. Reserve your seat. University / Free & Live Webinar Live GPCR Webinars with the World's Leading Experts. Deep-dive sessions focused on real pharmacology, real drug discovery challenges, and real translational insight. Live Q&A with the scientists shaping the field. Live for those who can be there. On demand for everyone else. 👉 Sign Up for Notifications Get the live link before each session Strategic Partners Webinars Upcoming Live & On Demand Webinars Tuning GPCR System Sensitivity: Revealing True Drug Activity Through Functional Volume Control Speaker: Dr. Terry Kenakin | Head Instructor Terry's Pharmacology Corner | UNC Chapel Holl What you'll learn during the session: How functional system sensitivity for receptor expression becomes a tool for determining the properties of a molecule Why testing agonists in low sensitivity systems separates affinity and efficacy and enables prediction of agonism in other systems How testing antagonists in high sensitivity systems detects low levels of efficacy and, through constitutive activity, inverse agonism How volume control reveals essential properties of allosteric modulators, including PAM-agonism and changes in efficacy 📅 September 24, 2026 at 11:00:00 AM Details Recombinant Antibodies for GPCRs: A Challenge to the Community Speakers Dr. Alexander Ball, MD Dr. Alexander Ball of GeneTex joins Dr. GPCR to walk through what the company is doing about it, and the challenge it comes with: A high-throughput recombinant antibody platform built for specificity at scale Prioritized validation: CRISPR KO/KD, endogenous expression, cell fractionation, comparable antibodies, application-specific testing VirDTM-GPCR arrays for cross-reactivity screening when feasible More than 300 recombinant mAbs against almost 200 human GPCRs, and growing Free samples for GPCR researchers who will test the antibodies in their own labs and give structured feedback 📅 June 25, 2026 at 11:00:00 AM Details Receptor Signaling Bias: A Valuable and Accessible Property of New Drug Candidates Speaker Dr. Terry Kenakin - UNC Chappel Hill | Terry's Pharmacology Corner Topics Covered The biological basis of receptor signaling bias and ligand-dependent conformations How to design functional assay panels that quantify bias rather than infer it Interpretation pitfalls and what assay system choice does to bias estimates Translating pathway-level data into lead selection and optimization decisions Why potency alone is not enough for candidate-level decisions 📅 May 28, 2026 at 11:00:00 AM Details 1 2 1 ... 1 2 ... 2 1,400+ Scientists in the Ecosystem 30+ Countries Represented 60–90 Scientists per Live Session Free Always. No Paywall. No Catch. Use It Tomorrow Practical takeaways, every session. Walk away with something you can apply in your next experiment, assay, or project decision. Together in the Room Scientists from around the world, in the same conversation. The chat, the Q&A, the shared curiosity — the community thinking together in real time. Free and Generous No paywall. No catch. The ecosystem gives this away because GPCR scientists deserve access to high-quality science. Sign up, show up, bring your questions. Direct Access Ask an expert a live question and get a real answer. That direct access doesn't exist at conferences — it exists here. No Borders Live for those who can be there. On demand for everyone else. The GPCR community doesn't stop at borders — and neither do we. Stay Ahead Learn about methods, tools, and approaches before they become widely known. Be ahead of colleagues who aren't in the ecosystem. What Makes These Webinars Different? Not a lecture. A scientific exchange. Built for the GPCR community, by the GPCR community. Every session is designed to move your science forward. First Dr. GPCR event? Welcome. This is what the community looks like — scientists from around the world, thinking through discovery challenges together. There's no paywall, no catch. Just real science and real exchange. If this is your first session, there's a lot more where this came from. Want to Go Deeper? This Is Just the Beginning If a free webinar is this good, imagine what the full ecosystem looks like. Dr. GPCR University brings you premium Masterclass sessions, 200+ recordings, weekly curated news, and a global community of GPCR scientists — all in one place. Webinar → Weekly News → 14-Day Trial → University Premium 👉 Sign Up for Notifications These sessions are part of a larger mission: building the most trusted home for GPCR scientists worldwide. Frequently Asked Questions Questions about the webinars What are GPCR webinars? GPCR webinars are free, live online scientific sessions focused on G protein-coupled receptor biology, pharmacology, signaling, and drug discovery. Each session explores mechanistic models, translational challenges, and real-world therapeutic implications through presentations and live Q&A. They're designed for scientists who want deep, data-driven discussion rather than surface-level overviews. Who should attend? Any scientist working with GPCRs — pharmacologists, medicinal chemists, cell biologists, translational researchers, discovery teams, postdocs, PIs, and industry scientists. Whether you're deep in receptor biology or evaluating assay tools, these sessions are built for you. Are the webinars free? Yes. Always. No paywall, no catch. Sign up with a free registration and you'll receive the live link before each session. Recordings are also freely available on demand afterward. Are the webinars live or pre-recorded? All webinars are live events with real-time Q&A — that's the point. After the live session, the full recording becomes available on demand so scientists in every time zone can access the same content and depth. How are these different from conference talks or academic seminars? The Q&A is the core, not an afterthought. These sessions are designed for interaction — scientists asking direct questions and getting real answers. There's no travel required, no registration fee, and you're in a room with researchers from dozens of countries who share your focus on GPCRs. What topics are typically covered? GPCR pharmacology, signaling, structural biology, allosteric modulation, biased agonism, assay design, drug discovery workflows, translational challenges, and the science behind emerging tools and methods. Every session is grounded in receptor biology with a focus on what's practical and applicable. Do I need prior knowledge of GPCR pharmacology? A working understanding of GPCR biology helps you get the most from each session. That said, the presenters are skilled at making complex science accessible, and the Q&A often covers foundational questions alongside advanced discussion. Where can I find more advanced GPCR training? If you want to go deeper, Dr. GPCR University offers premium Masterclass sessions with frontier science, unresolved questions, and extended scientific exchange — exclusively with independent scientists. The webinars are the open door; Masterclass is the room you earn access to. You can explore University with a 14-day trial. Be in the Room When the Science Moves Forward Sign up to get notifications about upcoming webinars. Bring your questions. 👉 Sign Up for Notifications