RECORD ATTENDANCE AT DISCOVERY ON TARGET 2015
Discovery on Target would like to thank all of the speakers and attendees, sponsors and exhibitors who came to Boston for this year’s annual event. The event drew a large number of attendees with 1,100+ participants from 26 countries networking
and discussing current and emerging ‘hot’ drug targets for the pharmaceutical industry.
Plenary Keynote Program
PLENARY KEYNOTE INTRODUCTION:
Comprehensive Kinase and Epigenetic Compound Profiling
Kelvin Lam, Ph.D., Director, Strategic Partnerships, Reaction Biology Corporation
Kinase inhibitors can be used as chemical probes to understand signal transduction pathways. Since the majority of kinase probes inhibit multiple kinases, understanding the off-target effects will allow scientists to design better poly-pharmacologic compounds
to meet specific therapeutic needs. Profiling a compound against the entire kinase gene family will allow us to understand the compound’s full enzymatic activities. Unexpected activities could lead to different chemical design and possibly novel
therapeutic opportunities. Reaction Biology offers large-scale in vitro kinase and epigenetic profiling services for (1) compound prioritizing and (2) elucidating novel activities for kinase and epigenetic inhibitors.
PLENARY KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
iPS Cell Technology, Gene Editing and Disease Research
Rudolf Jaenisch, M.D., Founding Member, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research; Professor,
Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The development of the iPS cell technology has revolutionized our ability to study human diseases in defined in vitro cell culture systems. A major problem of using iPS cells for this “disease in the dish” approach is the choice of control
cells because the unpredictable variability between different iPS / ES cells to differentiate into a given lineage. Recently developed efficient gene editing methods such as the CRISPR/Cas system allow the creation of genetically defined models of
monogenic as well as polygenic human disorders.
PLENARY KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
The Evolutionary Dynamics and Treatment of Cancer
Martin Nowak, Ph.D., M.Sc., Professor, Biology and Mathematics and Director, Program for Evolutionary Dynamics,
Harvard University
Cancer is an evolutionary process. Cancer initiation and progression are caused by somatic mutation and selection of dividing cells. The mathematical theory of evolution can therefore provide quantitative insights into human cancer.