Track-2 (Emerald 3): Chemical Biology Approaches to Drug Discovery Workshop

The RNA Silencing for Drug Discovery – Challenges & Strategies is a short i.e. two and half hour Free* Workshop to be held on September 11, 2014 at Ramada Powai Hotel & Convention Centre, Mumbai. The workshop will commence after the end of the first day of the Drug Discovery India 2014 conference i.e. from 5:30pm -8:00 pm.
*Free for Registered delegates of DDI/DADMET/ILA

Summary

Two of the most important ways in which oligonucleotide based gene post-transcriptional down-regulation can be achieved at the mRNA level is either by the antisense oligonucleotides (AON), the small interfering RNAs (RNAi) or micro-RNA (miRNA) action. Chemically modified AONs, siRNAs and miRNAs are currently being developed as therapeutic agents for various diseases including viral infections, cancer, inflammatory diseases etc. by knocking down the corresponding target mRNA. The workshop will focus on development of suitable chemical modifications with improved systemic delivery properties and tracking them with their fluorescent functions which will be very useful in identification of new disease biomarkers, target elucidation, SNP detection and to develop new diagnostic tools for monitoring disease prognosis and development. This will be an interactive workshop in which the attendees will have ample opportunity to discuss issues they are facing during their research.

Workshop Contents

The course will cover the following topics:
• Introduction of  the concept of using RNA  silencing for drug discovery
• Challenges and Strategies involve in development of oligonucleotide based therapeutics.
• Chemical methodologies to down regulate gene expression of diseases.
• Appropriate Drug Delivery Mechanics
• Recent advances and technologies for targeting drug discovery
• Q & A Session

Commercial outlook of chemically-modified RNAi

RNAi technology has become a powerful tool for the study of functional genomics and it has also been identified that this therapy has the capability to successfully silence any gene with artificial triggers of RNAi and utilizing the cellular machinery for efficient targeting of complementary transcripts. The available RNAi therapy market reports have summarized that this technology is gaining popularity now-a-days due to the fact that big pharma companies are exhausting with the existing product pipelines. These companies are currently working towards RNAi therapeutics and identifying some new ideas which have a great opportunity to grow. It is estimated that the market potential of RNAi Research & development tools and diagnostics will be >$3000 million by 2015. It is further projected that the global RNAi drug delivery market was worth $7 billion in 2010 expected to grow to nearly $24.1 billion by 2015 at a 5-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.9%.

Reference Material

Who should attend?

The workshop is suitable for students, researchers, faculty, lecturers, scientists, academicians and company professionals working in the area of drug discovery/Biotechnology/Gene silencing/Molecular Biology/Pharma R&D.