Roger Estrada Weaver

Roger Estrada Weaver is a Full Professor at the IQS School of Engineering, Universitat Ramon Llull, where he works in the Department of Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry as part of the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Group. He maintains an active research profile with an h-index of 749 and has been involved in numerous research projects since 2007.

His research focuses on RNA Biochemistry, Heterocyclic Compound Chemistry, Drug Discovery, Small Molecule Biochemistry, and targeted cancer therapies. He has made significant contributions to the development of CXCR4 inhibitors, IRAK4 degraders, and compounds targeting pathogenic RNA structures, with particular emphasis on treatments for lymphoma and other hematological malignancies.

His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward computational and molecular approaches to drug design, particularly for cancer therapeutics. His work integrates molecular modeling with synthetic chemistry to develop novel compounds targeting specific pathways in malignancies, with increasing focus on precision medicine approaches for hematological cancers.

Professor Weaver leads the GQF: Grup de Química Farmacèutica research group and is Principal Investigator for several significant projects including DisX4lymph (focused on CXCR4 allosteric inhibitors and IRAK4 degraders for B-cell lymphoma treatment) and PROTEOblood (a Franco-Spanish cooperative network for proteinopathy analysis and development of individualized therapies in hematological cancers). His research has been funded by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR), European Commission, and Universitat Ramon Llull.

His laboratory work centers around the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Group at IQS, where his team develops innovative approaches to target RNA structures and protein interactions in cancer. Current research directions include covalent reversible inhibitors of IRAK4, non-symmetrical CXCR4 inhibitors, structural simplification methods for hit discovery, and photochemical synthesis techniques for heterocyclic compounds with therapeutic potential.