"Explorations into New Therapeutic Entities, Crowd Funding & Collaborative Drug Discovery & Development

Date: 

Tue - Wed, Jul 15 to Jul 16, 8:00am - 5:00pm

Location: 

Sheraton Commander Hotel, 16 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA

3rd Annual Drug Repositioning, Repurposing and Rescue Conference

Click here to register for this event.  Visit the event website.

This year's conference will highlight the latest developments in the fields of drug repositioning, repurposing and rescue. This conference will also serve as an integral meeting place for those engaged in efforts to further drug development through new means of collaborations, including via patient advocacy efforts and industry/academic/government cooperation.

FEATURED PRESENTATIONS 
 
Celgene Global Health:  Focusing on Those Who Can Least Afford to Live by Re-focusing a Proprietary Chemical Library
Celgene Global Health (CGH) is a division of Celgene Corporation "focusing on those who can least afford to live". CGH is exploring the potential of Celgene's chemical library and pipeline to address diseases of the developing world (DDWs) and neoplasms prevalent in lower income settings. CGH is operating as a virtual company partnering with foundations, product development programs, universities, institutions, and other companies to discover and develop its assets. The goal is create meaningful medications for these illnesses and by doing so CGH will transform into a self-sustaining "Social Business" that continues to perform this type of activity. In his presentation, Dr. Zeldis will discuss Celgene's and CGH's efforts to combat DDWs.
Jerome B. Zeldis, MD, Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer, Celgene Corp., CEO, Celgene Global Health

Repurposing as a Viable, Risk-managed Business Model
Rediscovery Life Sciences aims to develop new medicines through drug repurposing.  We see repurposing as having a fundamentally better risk/reward profile, and thus it can be a great de-risking tool for life science investors. Their business model insures low startup costs, effective risk management and triple-bottom-line value creation. They achieve this through disciplined scouting and due diligence, entrepreneurial translational development, and a project-focused portfolio approach.  
Daniel Behr, MBA, Co-founder and Partner, Rediscovery Life Sciences

Pushing the Boundaries of Science Together Through Open Innovation Partnerships
AstraZeneca has recently announced a Open Innovation platform (www.openinnovation.astrazeneca.com) to invite collaborations with investigators and clinicians across all stages of drug discovery – from innovative early ideas through to clinical validation. Collaboration with AstraZeneca means access to optimized compounds, compound libraries, technologies, multi-disciplinary science, services and/or know-how with the prospect of joint publications in high profile journals and, most importantly, the opportunity to push the boundaries of medical science and deliver life-changing medicines to patients in need. The specific modules (offerings) in this platform as well as the associated benefits and challenges will be described with particular focus on drug repositioning.
Craig D. Wegner, Ph.D., Executive Director, Translational Science, Emerging Innovations Unit, Scientific Partnering & Alliances, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP

Repositioning: Validating a Drug Target for a New Indication through Genetics, Expression, and Phenotypic Screening
Drug repositioning offers the potential to create value for patients in a quicker time frame. It is also perhaps one of the better ways to validate targets for a new indication. We will examine how data from across the drug discovery can suggest additional indications. We will also discuss some computational methods that can systematically identify disease indications for drugs; in particular 1) genome wide association studies (GWAS), 2) connectivity map (expression based drug signatures), and 3) data from phenotypic screens.
Pankaj Agarwal, Ph.D., Director, Systematic Drug Repositioning (SyDR), QSci Computational Biology, RD Projects, Clinical Platforms, & Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline

See also: For the Public