Congratulations to the team of researchers which featured Dr Elena De Vita and Dr Andrii Gorelik on winning the Merck Innovation Cup 2021

The Merck Innovation Cup is an international competition designed to develop new ideas for unmet clinical needs. This year, over 2000 researchers applied, from which 6 teams (of 6 researchers each) were selected by Merck and lined up for the competition. Following a week of virtual contact with professionals at Merck, each team pitched an idea in a different topic of life sciences, with ‘Team Drug Discovery Technology’ making it through to the finals.

The team was coached by Andrii Gorelik (The Francis Crick Institute) and consisted of Elena De Vita (Imperial College London), Martin Maier (LMU), Suyuan Chen (Leibniz-Institut für Analytische Wissenschaften - ISAS), Debakshi Mullick (Weizmann Institute of Science), Monika Witzenberger (Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen), and Eviatar Fields (McGill University).

The winning idea was based on the concept of molecular glues. This has been a recent hot topic in drug discovery. The team members were awarded the Merck Innovation Cup and a cash prize of €20,000.

This marks the second consecutive Merck Innovation Cup win for the Tate group, following Andrii’s win last year.

Congratulations to Team Drug Discovery Technology!