Dame Margaret Brimble is a Distinguished Professor and Director of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is Past-President of IUPAC Organic and Biomolecular Division III, an Associate Editor for Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, and Deputy Director of the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, has been inducted into the American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame and received the Rutherford, Hector and MacDiarmid medals (Royal Society NZ), the Kiwinet BNZ Supreme award and Baldwins Research Entrepreneur 2019 commercialization awards and the Marsden medal (NZ Association of Scientists). She was awarded the Sosnovsky Award for Cancer Therapy and Natural Products award from the Royal Society of Chemistry. Her research focusses on the synthesis of novel bioactive natural products/antimicrobial peptides and the synthesis of lipopeptides for cancer vaccines and new biomaterials. She discovered the drug candidate trofinetide (NNZ2566) that is in phase 3 clinical trials for Rett Syndrome (Neuren Pharmaceuticals and Acadia Pharmaceuticals) and NNZ2591 (phase 2 clinical trials for Phelan-McDermid syndrome, Angelman syndrome and Pitt Hopkins syndrome). She is co-founder of the cancer immunotherapy company SapVax that has licensed her CLipPA peptide lipidation technology to develop self-adjuvanting peptide-based cancer vaccines. Her laboratory hosts NZ’s only laboratory accredited by Medsafe NZ to manufacture peptides under cGMP for human clinical trial.