Monday, September 21, 8:00 – 11:00am

SC1: Cancer Metabolism: Pathways, Targets and Clinical Updates

Cancer cells, to fuel their growth, rely on what for normal cells is the ‘side’ metabolic pathway. Therefore inhibiting the metabolic enzymes that are ‘activated’ in the cancer cells offers a more precise and targeted therapeutic approach for cancer. This strategy has started to gain traction in the drug discovery industry over the past few years with the first ‘cancer metabolic’ inhibitors recently progressing into clinical trials. In this course we will review the complex metabolic pathways that are exploited by cancer cells and provide an update of the status of the cancer metabolic inhibitors in development.

Instructors:

Raju Pusapati, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Discovery Oncology (Jeff Settleman Lab), Genentech, Inc.

Vipin Suri, Ph.D., Head of Biology, Raze Therapeutics

Course Outline:

Basics of Cancer Metabolism

• Warburg Effect and Central Carbon Metabolism
• Therapeutic Targeting of Cancer Metabolic Pathways

One-carbon Metabolic Pathways

• Significance for cancer
• How drug targets are identified
• Next steps/target prosecution

Case Study- Opportunities and Challenges in the Therapeutic Targeting of Glycolysis in Cancer

Current Status of the Field/Updates of Clinical Progress

Q&A (also throughout course)

Instructor Biographies:

Raju Pusapati has a PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology from The University of Texas/MD Anderson Cancer Center. He has extensive training in cancer biology from MD Anderson Cancer Center, MGH Cancer Center/Harvard medical School and Genentech Inc. Currently he works in the area of cancer metabolism as a research fellow in Discovery Oncology at Genentech.

Vipin Suri, PhD, brings 14 years of experience in biology, pharmacology and biomarker development to Raze. Prior to joining Raze at its inception in July 2013, Dr. Suri was Director and Head of Pharmacology at Sirtris, a division of GlaxoSmithKline leading pharmacology and biomarker development for modulators of protein deacetylases in a number of disease areas including metabolism, inflammation and neurodegeneration. Dr. Suri started his career at Wyeth (now Pfizer), where he focused on novel small molecule, peptide, nucleic acid, and protein therapeutics for obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and other metabolic disorders and led a number of teams through preclinical development. Dr. Suri obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at Brandeis University and his MBA at Yale School of Management. Dr. Suri is the author or coauthor/inventor of 49 publications, presentations and patents.

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