Tuesday, June 15
Data Sharing
8:45 am Chair’s Remarks
8:50 Enabling Collaborative Science through Open Standards and Common Software
Les Jordan, Chief Technology Strategist, Microsoft Life Sciences
A primary barrier to collaboration - and innovation - in the scientific realms is the plethora of tools and technologies that are prevalent in the environment. Differing LIMS, ELNs, and lab equipment that are not integrated not only hamper a scientist’s productivity, but make it impossible to collaborate and share data with co-workers. This session will discuss the effect on collaborative innovation - particularly in science - if such collaboration were based on common software and utilized open standards.
9:20 Reaching Out to Collaborators on the Cloud:
Crowd-Sourcing for Pharmaceutical Research
Sean Ekins, Ph.D., Collaborations Director, Research & Development, Collaborative Drug Discovery
What crowdsourcing resources are there for Pharmaceutical research? What are the pros and cons? How can they be used? I will answer these questions and provide some of my experiences of using collaborative software.
9:50 The Successful Use of HEOS® by DNDi: Sponsored by A SaaS Collaboration Platform in a Virtual Neglected Diseases Drug Discovery and Development ModelSponsored by:
Jean-Robert Ioset, Professor, Project Coordinator, Research & Development, Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi)
Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) is a collaborative, patients’ needs-driven, non-profit drug research and development organization that is discovering and developing new treatments for malaria, visceral leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness and Chagas disease. DNDi is a virtual R&D organization working in partnership on multiple projects with industry, academia and NGOs worldwide. HEOS®, proposed as a SaaS model by SCYNEXIS, is an integrated component of DNDi project activity which allows easy and secure data sharing with all authorized partners in the network. HEOS® is interfaced with the Accelrys scientific tools, a reference in the industry, to offer “the best science for the most neglected.” The presentation will include a recent study case where one of the collaborative projects has resulted in a new pre-clinical candidate for sleeping sickness.
10:20 Networking Coffee Break, Poster and Exhibit Viewing
Collaborative Tool Development and Evaluation
11:00 Financing Collaborative Projects on Enabling Technologies for Drug Discovery
Max Fehlmann, Ph.D., President & CEO, Quebec Consortium of Drug Discovery
The concept of open innovation represents a powerful approach for improving productivity within the industry. Focusing on collaborative development of enabling technologies that accelerate drug discovery and development may produce real benefits and be an easier avenue for pre-competitive collaboration. The Quebec Consortium of Drug Discovery is a fully mutualized industrial consortium focusing on these goals. Experience with funding, creative format for partnerships and management of intellectual property will be presented as part of how this consortium operates.
11:30 Collaborative Evaluation of New Technology
Stefan J. Platz, Ph.D., Head, Toxicology & Pathology, F. Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd.
The numbers of opportunities related to new technologies to better predict safety alerts is increasing continuously and cover a broad spectrum from high content imaging to stem cell derived cardiomyocytes. It is therefore crucial to define a company strategy which addresses specific areas of interest and innovation. Another aspect to be kept in mind is the business model to explore the value of a technology. This could be either a consortia, a cross company collaboration or alternatively a company individual approach.
12:00 pm Panel Discussion
12:30 Lunch On Your Own
Collaboration in Biological Space
1:45 Chair’s Remarks
1:50 Pre-Competitive Target Identification and Validation: The Future of R&D or Simply Giving Away the Farm?
David Cook, Ph.D., Global Safety Assessment, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
This presentation will address the following questions: Where is the real business value to be had in taking a purely proprietary view of target identification and validation (TI/TV)? With spiraling costs, more challenging regulatory environment and intrinsically more complicated disease biology to be considered, is there scope for a more collaborative, pre-competitive approach to TI/TV that spreads the risk and enables better use of skills between business and academia? What are the challenges and blockers to collaboration in TI/TV? Are we simply in danger of “giving away the farm”? What can we learn from other industries and areas where collaboration and open-source approaches are already embedded?
2:20 Open Pharmacological Space: A New Innovative Medicines Initiative Collaboration
Bryn Williams-Jones, Ph.D., Associate Research Fellow, Head, eBiology, Pfizer
IMI is the world’s largest public-private partnership. This Open Pharmacological Space call is of global significance and will greatly raise the bar in the availability of high quality relevent data for target selection, drug data and knowledge management in the public domain.
2:50 Networking Refreshment Break, Poster and Exhibit Viewing
3:30 COBRED - European Biomarker Discovery Consortium
Mariana Guergova-Kuras, Ph.D., Director of Research, Biosystems International
COBRED (www.cobred.eu) is a European cancer diagnostics/biomarker discovery consortium, now in its third year. The research is designed to integrate gene expression profiling, proteomics and metabolic profiling in breast and colon cancer. Results from the research thus far, as well as issues related to the formation, funding, governance and operation of the consortium research will be presented.
4:00 Update on The Biomarkers Consortium: A Unique Opportunity to Collaborate in Biomarkers Research
Shawnmarie Mayrand-Chung, Ph.D., NIH Director for The Biomarkers Consortium & Senior Advisor to The Biomarkers Consortium
Effective identification and deployment of biomarkers is essential to achieving a new era of predictive, preventive and personalized medicine. Biomarkers promise to accelerate basic and translational research, speed the development of safe and effective medicines and treatments for a wide range of diseases, and help guide clinical practice. The Biomarkers Consortium is a public-private biomedical research partnership among NIH, FDA, and PhARMA, managed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) that endeavors to develop, validate, and qualify biological markers to speed the development of medicines and therapies for detection, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and improve patient care. This unique collaborative effort endeavors to advance biomarkers research using a cost and risk sharing approach aimed at generating public resources to advance biomarkers research through precompetitive efforts.
4:30 Public-Private Partnerships: HESI Experience in the Practice of Collaboration
Syril D. Pettit, Ph.D., MEM, Associate Director, HESI, ILSI
For the last 20 years, the ILSI Health and Environmental Sciences Institute has facilitated public-private partnerships around risk and safety sciences. This presentation will highlight best practices and common challenges in the design and implementation of scientific consortia.
5:00 Panel Discussion
5:30 Close of Day
For more details on the conference, please contact:
Phillips Kuhl
President
Cambridge Healthtech Institute
T: (+1) 781-972-5410
E: pkuhl@healthtech.com
For partnering and sponsorship information, please contact:
Arnie Wolfson
Manager, Business Development
Cambridge Healthtech Institute
T: (+1) 781-972-5431
E: awolfson@healthtech.com