Track 1 Agenda

Balancing Leverage with Stewardship of a Corporate Compound Collection
Rose Gonzales, Director, Pfizer Global R&D, United States of America

The Corporate Compound Collection is one of the key assets of a pharmaceutical research company like Pfizer.  In this presentation, we will highlight examples of good stewardship of the collection while maximizing its utility in the discovery of new medicines.

Incorporating Custom Data Tools into Compound Management Workflows to Maximize Efficiency and Minimize Errors
Travis Mathewson, Principal Scientist, Pfizer Global Research and Development, United States of America

In this presentation, a range of custom data tools will be highlighted as examples of how integrating them into various compound management workflows can supplement and complement enterprise software in order to simplify data exchange to enhance efficiency and minimize errors.

Repurposing Approaches for Rare and Neglected Tropical Diseases
John Mckew, Chief, National Institutes Of Health, United States of America

This presentation will summarize approaches taken by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences to develop phenotypic assays addressing Rare or Neglected Tropical Diseases and results found when screened through a variety of annotated libraries.

Development of Orphan Drugs through Repurposing
Ramaiah Muthyala, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota, United States of America

In this presentation, new strategies highlighting the novel technologies, lead generation tactics, product development, intellectual property issues, patient, public and private efforts along with specific examples highlighting the power of repurposing/repositioning will be presented.

What Can We Learn from Fragment Based Optimization Programs?
Gyorgy Keseru, Scientific Advisor, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary

Changes in physico-chemical properties and ligand efficiency indices were analyzed in nearly 150 fragment-based drug discovery programs. The observations discussed in the talk suggest some guidelines for monitoring fragment optimizations.

Computational Modeling and Simulation of GPCRs in Structure-Based Drug Design
Hugo Gutierrez de Teran, Senior Researcher, Uppsala University, Sweden

The superfamily of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is particularly relevant in pharmacology. I will present a specific methodology for modelling and simulation of GPCRs implemented in the web-based server GPCR-ModSim (http://gpcr.usc.es) and a new efficient technique for quantitative predictions of the effects of single point-mutations on ligand binding. I will illustrate these methods with recent applications on ligand binding to adenosine and neuropeptide-Y receptors.

Identification of an Atg8-Atg3 protein-protein interaction inhibitor from the MMV Malaria Box active in blood and liver stage P. falciparum parasites.
Jürgen Bosch, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University, United States of America

Here we report the identification of a class of compounds that inhibit the Plasmodium Atg8-Atg3 protein protein interaction as well as inhibiting in vitro growth of P. falciparum in blood- and liver-stage assays.

Characterizing the Early Drug Development Outsourcing Landscape
Stella Stergiopoulos, Senior Project Manager, Tufts University School of Medicine, United States of America