Speakers Share

Christopher Austin

Director, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

BIOGRAPHY
Emily Balskus

Associate Professor, Harvard University's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

BIOGRAPHY
Jeff Blaney

Director of Computational Chemistry & Cheminformatics Genentech

BIOGRAPHY
Mark Blaskovich

Program Coordinator: Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery, University of Queensland

BIOGRAPHY
Sean Ekins

CEO, Collaborations Pharmaceuticals

BIOGRAPHY
Enoch Huang

Executive Director, Computational Sciences, Pfizer

BIOGRAPHY
Nancy J Kelley

Founder, Nancy J Kelley + Associates

BIOGRAPHY
Derek Lowe

Research Fellow, Vertex

BIOGRAPHY
Lisa Marcaurelle

Vice President, Discovery Chemistry, H3 Biomedicine

BIOGRAPHY
Vic Myer

Chief Technology Officer, Editas

BIOGRAPHY
Robert Plenge

Vice President, Merck

BIOGRAPHY
Christina White

Professor of Chemistry, University of Illinois

BIOGRAPHY
Hagop Youssoufian

Chief Medical Officer, BIND Therapeutics

BIOGRAPHY

SEP 16, 2015

C&EN's Virtual Symposium: Advances in Drug Discovery and Development

C&EN is delighted to present its second annual virtual symposium highlighting groundbreaking research in drug discovery, chemical synthesis, informatics and drug development.

On September 16, 2015, a renowned group of scientists from biotech, pharma and academia will present the latest research findings and new technologies that are driving the design, discovery and development of new drugs – from traditional small molecules and biologics to cutting-edge gene-editing and immunological technologies. Speakers will present the latest advances in identifying promising drug targets, verifying lead compounds, and new strategies that are delivering more powerful, personalized drugs to the marketplace.

Last year, more than 7,400 scientists signed up to attend C&EN’s inaugural virtual event. We invite you to join an even larger audience this September. If you can’t make the live lectures, all presentations will be archived and available on demand for three months.

PROGRAM
This year’s keynote and event speakers are driving R&D inside leading commercial and academic institutions, including Merck, Pfizer, Genentech, Editas Medicine, BIND Therapeutics, Syros, The Scripps Research Institute, and many more. Among the many themes to be covered are:

*Organic synthesis for novel drugs
*Personalized and precision medicine
*Structure-based drug design
*Business and collaborative strategies
*Gene regulation in cancer
*Informatics in the R&D environment
*Genome editing technologies

REGISTRATION

Register now for free, then log in on September 16 to visit the virtual conference and trade show. It’s like being there but without the cost or hassle of travel! Listen to 1-2 key talks or attend a stream of presentations throughout the day.

• Participate in live Q&A sessions
• “Walk the floor” in our virtual exhibition hall
• Live-chat with peers and vendors in the booth
• Download valuable resources
• Re-watch your favorite talks

The C&EN virtual symposium provides a perfect blend of interactivity and convenience. Build your personal agenda ahead of time; if you can’t attend the live symposium, watch replays on-demand at your convenience.

Speakers

Christopher Austin

Director, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
BIOGRAPHY
Emily Balskus

Associate Professor, Harvard University's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
BIOGRAPHY
Jeff Blaney

Director of Computational Chemistry & Cheminformatics Genentech
BIOGRAPHY
Mark Blaskovich

Program Coordinator: Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery, University of Queensland
BIOGRAPHY
Sean Ekins

CEO, Collaborations Pharmaceuticals
BIOGRAPHY
Enoch Huang

Executive Director, Computational Sciences, Pfizer
BIOGRAPHY
Nancy J Kelley

Founder, Nancy J Kelley + Associates
BIOGRAPHY
Derek Lowe

Research Fellow, Vertex
BIOGRAPHY
Lisa Marcaurelle

Vice President, Discovery Chemistry, H3 Biomedicine
BIOGRAPHY
Vic Myer

Chief Technology Officer, Editas
BIOGRAPHY
Robert Plenge

Vice President, Merck
BIOGRAPHY
Christina White

Professor of Chemistry, University of Illinois
BIOGRAPHY
Hagop Youssoufian

Chief Medical Officer, BIND Therapeutics
BIOGRAPHY

Agenda Share

Download Agenda

ondemand

SEP 16, 2015 2:00 PM PDT

Enabling the Best Structure-Based Design Engine:a Human Expert

Jeff Blaney

Director of Computational Chemistry & Cheminformatics Genentech
BIOGRAPHY

Structure-based drug discovery requires expert designers, aided by software that integrates 3D structure visualization and molecular editing with multivariate experimentaland calculated properties. Structural biology now provides excellent support for most small drug discovery targets and frequently delivers 10s to 100s of co-crystal structures, which must be aligned, annotated, selectively displayed, edited to design new analogs, and tightly integrated with project data. I'll describe our approaches to enable Structure-Based Design.

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SEP 16, 2015 2:00 PM PDT

Engineering Biology for a Sustainable Future

Nancy J Kelley

Founder, Nancy J Kelley + Associates
BIOGRAPHY

Synthetic biology—the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems, and the redesign of natural biological systems for useful purposes—is contributing sustainable and innovative solutions to numerous, pressing human needs and global challenges. First established as a scientific discipline, just over ten years ago, technical advances in the field continue to open up new possibilities in healthcare, agriculture, chemicals, materials, energy, and bioremediation. With an expected global market of $10.8 billion by 2016, synthetic biology will play an important role in the bioeconomy and has increasing implications for future US competitiveness and employment.

Watch Webinar
SEP 16, 2015 1:00 PM PDT

Q&A with Derek Lowe

Derek Lowe

Research Fellow, Vertex
BIOGRAPHY

In this interactive session, Derek Lowe will be taking questions from the audience in an informal discussion on his work in drug discovery, and his take on the current pharma landscape. Moderated by Lisa Jarvis, senior C&EN correspondent, this will be a must-attend session providing valuable insight into the world of chemistry and life sciences.

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SEP 16, 2015 12:00 PM PDT

Developing Accurate Nanomedicines: The BIND Therapeutics Approach

Hagop Youssoufian

Chief Medical Officer, BIND Therapeutics
BIOGRAPHY

Nanotechnology, the engineering and manufacture of materials at the atomic and molecular scale, is used at BIND Therapeutics to develop novel Accurin™ nanomedicines that utilize cytotoxic agents or molecularly targeted agents. This is made possible by entrapping the agent in a nanoparticle to harness its powerful efficacy and control the pharmacokinetics (PK), biodistribution and potentially increase cellular uptake to enhance efficacy and/or safety. Nanomedicines are designed to potentially deliver such drugs to tumor sites either by a passive or an active targeting mechanism or, in the case of Accurins, a combination of both. Many tumors have leaky vasculature. Accurins, which are typically less than 100 nm, are able to escape through the leaky vasculature and accumulate in the tumor tissue; this is known as passive targeting via the enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect. Active targeting refers to specific interactions between targeting ligands that are attached to the surface of Accurins and markers associated with the tumor cell or other tumor-associated cells, potentially resulting in enhanced accumulation or retention of particles at the tumor site or increased uptake of particles by cells expressing the target receptor. In addition, Accurins are designed to further increase the concentration of payloads by encapsulating the cytotoxic agent in a polyethylene glycol (PEG) coating that allow it to avoid uptake by immune cells. The PEG coating allows the nanoparticles to circulate for long time periods, with a controlled release of the payload, so that when the particles accumulate at the target tissue, the majority of the therapeutic payload can be released at the disease site and not in healthy tissue.

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SEP 16, 2015 12:00 PM PDT

The Functionalization of C-H Bonds

Christina White

Professor of Chemistry, University of Illinois
BIOGRAPHY

Among the frontier challenges in chemistry in the 21st century are the interconnected goals of increasing control of chemical reactivity while synthesizing and diversifying complex molecules with higher efficiency. Traditional organic methods for installing oxidized functionality rely heavily on sequential acid-base reactions that require extensive functional group manipulations (FGMs). In contrast, nature routinely uses allylic and aliphatic C-H oxidation methods, generally mediated by heme and non-heme iron monooxygenase enzymes, to directly install oxidized functionality into preformed frameworks of complex molecules. Due to their ubiquity in complex molecules and inertness to most organic transformations, C-H bonds have typically been ignored in the context of methods development for total synthesis. The exceptions to this rely on substrate directing groups to facilitate site-selectivity and reactivity. The discovery and development of catalysts for the direct installation of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon into allylic and aliphatic C-H bonds are discussed. Unlike Nature which uses elaborate shape or functional group recognition active sites, these small molecule catalysts utilize differential sensitivity to the C-H bond electronics, sterics, and stereoelectronic environment to achieve predictable site-selective and -divergent oxidations in complex molecule settings- and without the requirement for directing groups. Using these catalysts a code for site-selective C-H reactivity has been delineation that has proven to be highly general across a range of C-H oxidation catalysts and reactions. Our current understanding of these interactions and the development of a catalyst reactivity model that calculates and even predicts the major site of oxidation as well as the magnitude and direction of the site-selectivity in complex substrates as a function of catalyst will be described.

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SEP 16, 2015 11:00 AM PDT

Gut reactions: Understanding and manipulating chemistry from the human microbiota

Emily Balskus

Associate Professor, Harvard University's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
BIOGRAPHY

Humans are colonized by vast numbers of symbiotic microorganisms whose metabolisms are inextricably intertwined with our own. To understand how chemical transformations performed by the human microbiota influence human health, and to intervene therapeutically in diseases, it is critical that we link these metabolic functions to specific genes and organisms. My research group seeks to discover and understand the molecular basis of disease-associated metabolic pathways from the human gut microbiota. We use an understanding of chemical structure-reactivity principles and biosynthetic logic to devise hypotheses that associate bacterial genes with metabolic functions. We are also developing both bioinformatic and experimental approaches for characterizing and manipulating these activities in complex microbial communities. Ultimately, we aim to access chemical tools that interface with human gut bacteria and could serve as initial leads for the development of microbiota-targeted small molecule drugs. In this talk I will discuss our ongoing efforts to identify the genes and chemical mechanisms underlying multiple disease-associated microbial activities. I will also describe potential approaches for modulating microbial metabolism in the gut and how such strategies relate to other therapeutic opportunities and challenges presented by the human microbiota.

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SEP 16, 2015 10:00 AM PDT

Catalyzing Translational Innovation

Christopher Austin

Director, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
BIOGRAPHY

The process by which observations in the laboratory or the clinic are transformed into demonstrably useful interventions that tangibly improve human health is frequently termed "translation." This multi-stage and multifaceted process is poorly understood scientifically, and the current research ecosystem is operationally not well suited to the distinct needs of translation. As a result, biomedical science is in an era of unprecedented accomplishment without a concomitant improvement in meaningful health outcomes, and this is creating pressures that extend from the scientific to the societal and political. To meet the opportunities and needs in translational science, NCATS was created as NIH's newest component in December 2011, via a concatenation of extant NIH programs previously resident in other components of NIH. NCATS is scientifically and organizationally different from other NIH Institutes and Centers. It focuses on what is common to diseases and the translational process, and acts a catalyst to bring together the collaborative teams necessary to develop new technologies and paradigms to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the translational process, from target validation through intervention development to demonstration of public health impact. This talk will provide an overview of NCATS mission, programs, and deliverables, with a view toward future developments in drug discovery and translational medicine.

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SEP 16, 2015 9:00 AM PDT

Transforming translational medicine for effective drug discovery

Robert Plenge

Vice President, Merck
BIOGRAPHY

Learning Objectives for this presentation - (1) Understand how human genetics can contribute to drug discovery and development. (2) Understand the role of biomarkers and clinical proof-of-concept studies in testing therapeutic hypotheses.

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SEP 16, 2015 8:00 AM PDT

Diversity-Oriented Synthesis for Discovery of Novel Therapeutics

Lisa Marcaurelle

Vice President, Discovery Chemistry, H3 Biomedicine
BIOGRAPHY

Recent evidence demonstrating the importance of structural complexity in advancing compounds to the clinic points to the need for enhancing small molecule screening collections with sp3-rich compounds. The development of diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) strategies for accessing libraries of sp3-rich compounds containing one or more stereogenic centers will be presented, focusing on library synthesis efforts at H3 Biomedicine as well as previous work at the Broad Institute. The DOS libraries which have been created, span a broad range of molecular frameworks, including macrocycles and medium-sized rings, as well as fused-, bridged- and spirocyclic- ring systems. Preliminary results of high-throughput screening of the H3 compound collection will be discussed, with an emphasis on the identification of novel modulators of pre-mRNA splicing.

Watch Webinar
SEP 16, 2015 7:00 AM PDT

Editas Medicine, Creating a novel class of genome editing therapeutics

Vic Myer

Chief Technology Officer, Editas
BIOGRAPHY

Genome editing technologies, including the CRISPR/Cas9 system, allow for precise and corrective molecular modifications to treat the underlying cause of genetic diseases. Editas Medicine is developing CRISPR/Cas9-based therapeutics across abroad range of indications. This presentation will focus on Editas'approach to CRISPR technology optimization within the context of specific ex vivo and in vivo therapeutic applications

Watch Webinar
SEP 16, 2015 7:00 AM PDT

Open Science for Rare and Neglected Diseases

Sean Ekins

CEO, Collaborations Pharmaceuticals
BIOGRAPHY

As a computational scientist I have been fortunate to work with many collaborators to generate biological data to train and test my models. We are in a position with increasing amounts of data becoming accessible in the public domain to generate models and predictions relevant to finding molecules for many diseases. For example databases like ChEMBL and PubChem become a potential goldmine when combined with computational algorithms that can be applied quickly to identify new molecules to test. Over the past 8 years I have made extensive use of public datasets for screening against M. tuberculosis, T. Cruzi, responsible for tuberculosis and Chagas disease, respectively. This work has lead to collaborators testing a small number of compounds and finding novel actives. This approach is more broadly applicable to other diseases. The subsequent publication of the models and molecules into the public domain has also been addressed by developing tools on the desktop which can enable the sharing of machine learning models, and use on mobile devices. Many of the lessons learned have also been applied to work on rare diseases. For example, utilizing some of the high throughput screening data generated to identify inhibitors of the Ebola virus has been used to create machine learning models to find new molecules not previously tested. For many rare diseases there are huge data gaps and other approaches need to be taken. In spite of the many incentives offered it is likely most of the rare diseases do not present big commercial opportunities and hence there is definitely a place for more openness and collaboration to bring ideas from the lab to the clinic quickly.

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SEP 16, 2015 6:00 AM PDT

Of soft drinks and software: a framework to sustain innovation in computational molecular design

Enoch Huang

Executive Director, Computational Sciences, Pfizer
BIOGRAPHY

One of the challenges in sustaining innovation in computational molecular design is the need to harness and deliver promising solutions irrespective of their source, without creating new software applications or re-write existing ones. In this talk, I will provide an overview of Pfizer's molecular design infrastructure and the paradoxical solution that we've used to address this classic dilemma. I will also provide examples of specific computational methods and algorithms enabled by this approach, and describe our recent foray into cloud computing.

Watch Webinar
SEP 16, 2015 5:00 AM PDT

Synthetic Chemists to Aid the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery

Mark Blaskovich

Program Coordinator: Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery, University of Queensland
BIOGRAPHY

The antibiotic pipeline is broken, with a dearth of new antibiotics, a collapse in pharmaceutical company research1, and the exhaustion of chemical diversity contained in pharma libraries. "The low hanging fruit from the antibiotic tree has probably already been picked and new sources of compounds are needed."2 We believe that there is an untapped resource contained in the laboratories of synthetic organic chemists; synthetic compounds prepared for other projects that have never been tested for their antimicrobial potential. These compounds, which are sitting at the back of benches and freezers, may have been synthesised to validate new synthetic routes, develop new methodologies, or create unusual structures. A global screening initiative will uncover this significant and rich chemical diversity held outside of corporate screening collections by providing a low-barrier access to testing.Antibacterial drugs occupy a unique property space that is vastly different to drugs developed for other therapeutic areas, suggesting that commercially available chemical compounds lack the physicochemical properties ideal for activity against bacteria and therefore, a varied source of chemical diversity needs to be investigated. We have created a Wellcome Trust-supported not-for-profit Open-Access initiative, The Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery [CO-ADD], to provide unencumbered free antimicrobial screening for any interested researcher.3 CO-ADD builds upon a suite of established in vitro and in vivo assays, medicinal chemistry and core researcher expertise and aims to unearth fresh chemical diversity for the treatment of bacterial infection.

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