Laura G. Corral

Laura Corral has over 30 years of experience in drug discovery and cell biology research in the pharmaceutical industry. She started her industrial career as a Research Scientist at Celgene Corp. working in close collaboration with scientists at Rockefeller University. She was part of the small group of scientists led by Dr. David Stirling that performed in vitro and in vivo screening, characterization and optimization of thalidomide analogs, a project that led to the identification of a novel class of compounds known as IMiDs®. Two of these drugs, lenalidomide and pomalidomide, have received regulatory approval in several countries for oncological indications. In addition, Ms. Corral characterization of novel drug candidates contributed to the identification of a PDE4 inhibitor, apremilast, recently approved for the treatment of psoriatic arthritis. Ms. Corral developed new primary cell based assays in an effort to study to mechanism of action of IMiDs® . This effort uncovered different activities of thalidomide analogs, including effect on stem cells expansion and differentiation and antiproliferative effects in leukemic cells from patients. Ms. Corral received her M.S. degree in Cell Biology from New York University and a B.S. degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.