• How has drug discovery been affected by the changes in our economy, industry landscape and government?
• Hear the perspectives of different industry leaders as they discuss the issues that have caused recent changes- and where they see the industry going
• What can large and small Pharma learn from one another and what role can the public sector play?
• Where is research going from here?

• Combining the authenticity of phenotypic approaches with the efficiency of target-based approaches

Dr. Ben Munoz, Director of Medicinal Chemistry, The Broad Institute

Sponsored by:
EDWARDS WILDMAN PALMER LLP

• Although small molecule kinase inhibitors are showing great promise as targeted chemotherapeutic agents, there are still challenges to their efficacy and safety. These challenges include: understanding their polypharmacology, the mechanisms by which tumors possess or acquire resistance to these agents and how to develop strategies to predict and overcome such resistance
• Discuss how it is possible to measure the state of cancer cell signaling pathways using phosphoprotein biomarkers
• Address these issues with a case study a collection of small molecule BRAF kinase inhibitors that are in clinical trials for metastatic melanoma (including the recently approved vemurafenib) with a panel of genetically characterized melanoma cells lines
• Novel strategies against disorders such as neurodegenerative disease, cardiac injury, cancer, or diabetes must distinguish between cell protection and cell longevity
• Innovative treatment pathways may serve dual roles as biomarkers for disease onset and progression
• Novel targets to consider include sirtuins, wingless, and forkhead transcription factors

• Utilize high throughput physicochemical screening to identify leads with drug-like properties
• Convert early in silico and high throughput data into SAR knowledge
• Establish best practices to build knowledge base of Discovery compounds to ensure confidence in decision making
• Perform developability risk assessment to guide candidate selection and de-risk product development
• Eliminate costly drug delivery approaches as a result of an optimal early preformulation strategy

Dr. Mengwei Hu, Development Fellow, Merck Research Laboratories
Dr. Thomas Schroeter, Senior Principle Scientist, Pfizer (Pending)

• Learn to map the interactions of groups in your discovery process to ensure effective collaboration
• Utilizing lean tools to augment your discovery efficiency
• How to establish a road map in the Discovery space to integrate all activities and decision making to move compound forward
• Portfolio Modeling for Resource Allocation and Performance Forecasting in Drug Discovery

James Samanen, President, James Samanen Consulting, and former Director, Drug Discovery Project & Portfolio Management at GlaxoSmithKline

Speaking opportunities available!

• Animal testing for pharmacological and toxicity testing is expensive and the applicability information gained to the human population is often problematic. An element responsible for this predicament is the lack of understanding or considerations regarding the purity of the "reagents" used; i.e. the genetic background of the test animals
• Thus to maximize any model, it needs to be precise and defined, with the challenges/questions being asked of it being within its functional parameters
• Discussing bottlenecks in biomarker diagnostics: where do they live and how to circumvent them
• Adapting to the discovery of new biomarkers; and effectively incorporating them into your discovery process
• Spotlight: new issues in proteomics and genomics

Dr. Michael Wiles, Senior Director, Technology Evaluation and Development, The Jackson Laboratory
Dr. Michael Brehm, Research Professor, UMass Medical School Program in Molecular Medicine

• How are we defining a 'biologic' today? How do we evaluate which type is best?
• How many years of exclusivity can you count on having for your drug?
• BioBetters and their impact on the industry

Dr. Albert Giovenella, Adjunct Assistant Professor Of Medicine, and Drug Development Analyst, Dept of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Thomas H Wintner, Associate, Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP

• Optimizing selection on biologically annotated, IP-rich, rationally designed and priviledged structure molecules
• Understanding the role of Natural Products in HTS
• Using literature searches combined with SAR to identify novel, biologically active compounds

Dr. Andrew Napper, Head, High-Throughput Screening & Drug Discovery Lab, Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research
Dr. Melvin Reichman, Director, LIMR Chemical Genomics Center
Dr. Jeremy Duvall, Manager, DOS Chemistry, The Broad Institute

• How can more relevant biological systems be incorporated earlier in the discovery process to help improve efficacy
• Can we use tools like label-free detection to reveal whole-cell responses in target tissues that might give insights on adverse effects
• Can we drive knowledge generation on compounds effects through assembly of a broad database of whole cell and pathway responses

Dr. Ravi Marala, Business Development Manager- Integrative Pharmacology, Corning

• Can IT replace aspects of bench work? How will this help the bench work more efficiently?
• IT teams can provide a fresh perspective on possible bottlenecks in the testing process. Gain skills for enhancing communication between IT and the bench in order to collaborate on fool-proof processing