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Drug Discovery Revolution- The Beginning?

Bactevo are delighted to announce the date of September 28th, 2017 for the second ChemBioSphere meeting (entitled ChemBioSphere: Reprogramming Drug Discovery), following the enormous success of the inaugural meeting last week. Four one-day meetings will be held in successive years aimed at bringing together experts, change makers and decision leaders from every part of the drug discovery ecosystem to debate revolutionising the process of making effective medicines.   Held at the University of Cambridge on 22nd of September 2016, the forum brought together disruptive approaches which are expanding the available chemical space, understanding genomics-led disease-relevance and using Big Data analytics to truly dissect the effect of drugs on patients and the effect of chemicals on biological systems.

This years’ forum started off with an update on the 100,000 Genomes Project. Dr Mark Bale, Deputy Director of Health Science & Bioethics at UK Department of Health, highlighted the progress of the project focussing on NHS patients with rare diseases, cancer and infection. Dr Kath Mackay from Innovate UK also joined the opening session describing the 2016-17 Innovate UK Delivery Plan with a range of funding calls and the launch of the new Medicines Catapult. The next session showcased breakthrough approaches in naturally-derived small molecule diversity. Speakers in this session included Prof Eriko Takano from Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, Dr Werngard Czechtizky from Sanofi, Prof Barrie Wilkinson from John Innes Centre and Dr David Williams from Bactevo. The afternoon session on chemical space was chaired by Dr Lilian Alcaraz. Approaches in computational drug discovery, fragment engineering and use of virtual screening approaches were exemplified by speakers Dr Darren Green from GSK, Dr Daniel Foley from Leeds University and Dr Alex Alanine from Roche. The closing speaker Dr Jack Scannell from UBS challenged the audience on the R&D productivity in the Pharma industry. The inverse relationship between the amount spent on R&D and the number of drugs emerging from companies sparked discussions within the audience. The highly engaged audience was great with many questions during the sessions and during the networking opportunities around poster presentations.

Terrific meeting – really brings a cross disciplinary view to the interfaces of medicine, targets and therapeutic agents – state of the art and a path for the future to transform our effectiveness in the biosphere!” – Dr Alexander Alanine (Roche)

A really diverse, energising and thought provoking one-day meeting bringing together cross-discipline scientists in order to try to shape up the future of drug discovery” –  Dr Lilian Alacaraz (J&J)

A meeting for finding people in a different drug R&D discipline who have already solved some of your problems” – Dr Jack Scannell (UBS)

Find more information on this not-for-profit event: http://www.nannatherapeutics.com/chembiosphere/