Drug Discovery

A forum for researchers to exchange ideas, information and resources in order to expedite the discovery and validation of new targets and drugs.

Leadership

CO-CHAIRS
Neal Birnberg, Mercury Therapeutics
Nils Bergenhem, Escoublac, Inc.

Mission

To provide a forum for researchers to exchange ideas, information and resources in order to expedite the discovery and validation of new targets and drugs.

Action Plan

In 2008, the MBC Drug Discovery Committee is continuing the series of breakfast seminars focusing on technologies in drug discovery. In February we will have a session on safety and toxicology in pre-clinical development. Based on the input from our planning meeting in January, we will organize a series of meetings on protein therapeutics in the early spring. Biologicals range from protein replacement therapies to fusion proteins, antibodies, and novel technologies to design antibody-like proteins. Biologicals face different challenges than small molecules in terms of production and drug delivery, as well as advantages in terms of lead optimization and selectivity. The spring sessions will provide the opportunity to learn about and discuss this in detail.

As usual, if you have ideas you would like to suggest for future presentations, please feel free to contact Lori Gold at MBC at lori.gold@massbio.org or one of the Committee co-chairs.

The Drug Discovery Committee encourages individuals from all MBC Members with an interest in early stage drug discovery and development to attend and participate!

Topics

Pharmacogenomics
Target discovery and validation
Microarrays
Proteomics
Small molecule libraries
In vitro and cell-based assays
Animal models for human diseases
High throughput screening
In silico screening
Monoclonal antibodies
Protein therapeutics
Gene therapy
RNAi
Metabolomics
Systems biology approaches
Promising stem cell therapies
Anything pertinent to target validation, drug discovery or preclinical development

Meetings

Date	Event
5/15/08	"Technologies to build and select protein libraries"
4/17/08	Induction of Bone and Cartilage Growth by Bone Morphogenetic Proteins: From Bench to Bedside
6/19/08	From chemistry services to oncology drug discovery through novel oncology platforms

Past Presentations

Date	Presentation
2/21/08	Safety and Toxicology in pre-clinical development- Barros
12/14/07	High-Throughput Sequencing- Milos
11/29/07	Modern Tools in Drug Discovery and Later-Stage Development ADME-Tox Profiling- Tsaioun
10/25/07	Computational Models in Drug Discovery- DeWitt

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