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On February 24, 2021 TIAP hosted a LAB150 webinar entitled Adventures in Drug Hunting: Identify and Advance Your Drug-Like Molecule. 

Here is the full description of the webinar content:

In the second of three webinars in the LAB150 series, we turn to the initial stages of identifying and developing a therapeutic compound. This follows our previous discussion of target identification and validation.

Now that you have a validated therapeutic target, how do you go about discovering modulators of this target in an efficient and rational manner? Our panel will cover topics related to these areas, including:

  • High-throughput and high-content screening of small molecule libraries
  • Assay selection and development for screening and validating hits
  • Hit-to-lead campaigns: medicinal chemistry in the context of human physiology and disease
  • Focus on biologics: screening and optimizing antibodies and other polypeptide drugs

Short presentations to be followed by panel discussion and Q&A.

Stay tuned for the third and final webinar in the LAB150 series: Let’s Get Clinical: Anticipating Clinical Trials and How This Should Inform Your Pre-Clinical Work (tentatively late March 2021). This will require separate registration but anyone registering for the February 24 webinar will automatically receive notice of sign-up details closer to the date.

Speakers on February 24:

  1. Dr. Agnieszka Kielczewska

Dr. Kielczewska holds a Ph.D. degree from McGill University in Human Molecular Genetics. After her graduate studies, she joined a biotechnology company Inimex Pharmaceuticals, where she co-discovered the mechanism of action of the lead molecule. Since 2011 she has been holding roles of increasing responsibility at Amgen Canada, British Colombia. Agnieszka is currently in a principal scientist position, heads the Cell Sciences group responsible for generation and evaluation of immune repertoires enabling biologic discovery, and leads a number of therapeutic and reagent antibody discovery programs utilizing in vivo and in vitro discovery technologies.

  1. Dr. Mark Reed

Dr. Reed is a medicinal chemist and Staff Scientist at the Krembil Research Institute, University Health Network (UHN) and Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, UofT. In 2018, Mark established the Centre for Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery (CMCDD) to help academic researchers translate their discoveries into druggable targets. The facility offers medicinal chemistry support such as probe synthesis, hit identification strategies, hit to lead/lead optimization, molecular modelling and Intellectual property.

Mark has over 16 years of industrial experience in drug discovery, working in startups (CSO, Treventis Corporation, Toronto), biotech (ICOS corporation, Seattle) and large pharma (Schering Plough Research Institute, Cambridge, MA). Mark has implemented modern medicinal chemistry practices to identify and advance de-risked lead compounds towards the clinic in the areas of CNS, anti-infectives, immunology and oncology. Mark has published multiple papers and patents in areas of synthetic organic chemistry, neurodegeneration, neuropathic pain and inflammation.

  1. Dr. Ashley Jarvis

Dr. Jarvis joined Evotec SE in 2017 to help expand the Global Discovery Chemistry Leadership Team and provide scientific and operational leadership for Evotec’s contribution to integrated drug discovery projects. Ashley has over 20 years’ experience of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery in academia and industry, and has led project teams that have contributed to the nomination of several pre-clinical drug candidates, across different disease areas. As MedChem Lead for Evotec’s academic BRIDGES portfolio, including Lab150,  Ashley helps to evaluate new project opportunities and assign proposal teams across a broad range of therapeutic areas and target classes.

Ashley’s experience covers both academic and private sectors within the UK and New Zealand; including Domainex Ltd., The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, Industrial Research Ltd. and Oxford Asymmetry International.

Ashley earned a PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and a BSc Chemistry (first class) from the University of Bristol.

 

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