Originally from Brazil, Dr Jean Bertoldo moved to Australia from Germany to join Children’s Cancer Institute in March 2022, having been appointed Team Leader in the newly established Chemical Biology and Target-Based Drug Design Group. He completed his PhD in Biochemistry at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. He worked at both the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Lisbon, Portugal, developing new methods to chemically modify proteins to modulate their function. He then worked at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, where he developed a pioneering new drug for the treatment of ovarian cancer – a covalent inhibitor of an RNA-binding protein, which is the first of its kind. At Children’s Cancer Institute, Dr Bertoldo's team is working at the interface of chemistry, drug discovery and cancer biology with the main aim of designing new drugs for the treatment of childhood cancers such as neuroblastoma, medulloblastoma and DIPG.