MipTec 2009 – The Leading European Event for Drug Discovery

The conference in October 2008 marked some dramatic changes for MipTec: Most notable was the policy of free registration for the conference and exhibits. This drew a record attendance for the 12 years of the conference with more than 2,300 attendees. It was so successful that free registration will be continued for 2009. Changes are also in place for 2009, including additional session chairs, renowned experts in their fields, to bring new ideas to the drug discovery themes. A new session on biopharmaceuticals will ensure the scientific program stays current, while updating and improving established sessions will ensure that these important topics continue to be leading edge. Whether you are an academic scientist, a researcher in a pharmaceutical or biotech company or a developer and supplier of technology, this is the conference that should not be missed.

Date: 13-15 October 2009
Venue: Congress Center Basel, Switzerland
Website: www.miptec.com

Parallel to the MipTec 2009 Conference, the well-established vendor exhibition will be organised close to the Conference lecture halls. More than 100 companies present their products and services to industry leaders and decision makers. The success of 2008 promises that MipTec 2009 will repeat the performance and be a top event. The complete list of exhibitor can be found on www.miptec.com.

This year the MipTec Conference is divided into seven topics:

Drug Discovery Technologies

The session on Drug Discovery Technologies focuses on new technologies as well as on improvements of existing technologies. New concepts and recent developments such as novel lead identification strategies and high throughput electrophysiology assays will be discussed.

Biological Space

Biological aspects moved back into the spotlight of drug discovery. The use of primary cells and stem cells will increase the biological relevance of assay systems. Combined with novel therapeutic approaches, like screening for regenerative compounds, this will not only change the business model of today’s pharma industry, but also have impact on early discovery strategies. This conference will bring together experts in the field to illustrate how these challenging areas are being pursued in different laboratories.

Chemical Space

This session will have nine speakers with individual expertise exploring this broad chemistry topic.

How do you find the most valuable chemistry starting points for drug discovery? There is a continuum of approaches to this problem. At the most general there is the question of chemical diversity. What is the nature of chemical space? Are there islands of unexplored biologically active compounds and what specific types of compounds might lead to the discovery of these islands? If one has pre-existing ligand or target information we enter the realm of fragments, scaffold hopping, similarity metrics, the discovery of new bioisosteres and the discovery of new uses for existing drugs. What are the strengths (and weaknesses) of these approaches and how should these be used.

Structural and Computational Drug Discovery

The impact of protein structure information throughout the entire drug discovery process will be presented in our ‘Structural and Computational Drug Discovery’ topic. Three areas will be focused on at this year’s MipTec:

• Advances in kinase inhibitor design
• Virtual screening applications
• Structure-based design of protein therapeutics

Pharmacodynamics / Biomarkers

Specific topics of interest in this session are:

• Biomarkers based on non-invasive technologies
• Diagnostic tools at transcriptional, protein and metabolic level
• Development of objective markers for ‘subjective’ disorders: Pain, Depression, etc.
• Case-studies of pharmacodynamic technologies using high-sensitivity detection systems.

Early Safety Evaluation

This session will focus on approaches from all domains (i.e. in vivo, in vitro and in silico) that will enable to assess safety relevant parameters (e.g. ADME, pharmacokinetics and Tox) and the related risk / benefit balance to guide right decision making early in drug discovery.

Biopharmaceuticals

This session will focus on novel approaches with “classical” antibody-based therapeutics but also turn a watchful eye towards new developments tipped to be the next generation of biopharmaceuticals. It is hoped that the session will provide new information to both biopharmaceuticals insiders as well as an exciting introduction to the field for the non-initiated.

Keynote Speakers

This year’s keynote speakers are:

• Gregory Lucier, Chairman and CEO, Life Technologies – The impact of deep sequencing on drug discovery and development: In human genetic, a “second genomics” revolution has come into pass due to next-generation sequencing. An overview of this technique and of the information potential to be gained from it will be given during this lecture.
• Dr Martin Mackay, Global PGRD Executive, New York, Pfizer – R&D – As if our lives depended on it: Today’s life science companies have talent, tools and technologies to transform physical health and economic prosperity. In his lecture, Dr. Mackay will describe an industry urgently evolving to crack the attrition problem and meet ever-increasing demands for faster, safer, more effective and affordable medicines.
• Dr Hans Clevers, Director, Hubrecht Institute – Wnt, Lgr5 stem cells and colon cancer: The Wnt signaling pathway is of crucial importance to the biology of normal adult stem cells. Its deregulation is the principle cause of many cancers, most notably of the intestine. One of the genes that are controlled by the Wnt pathway encodes the Lgr5 surface receptor, an exquisite stem cell marker. Using a variety of genetic mouse models for Lgr5, new types of stem cells from a variety of tissues have been identified, isolated and cultured.
• Professor Jürgen Drews, Chairman of the Board of Directors of GPC-Biotech AG, München, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of Morphosys AG, München and Member of the Board or Directors of Human Genome Sciences, USA – Drug discovery: historical and current perspectives: After briefly discussing the history of drug discovery, an attempt will be made to analyse the status quo of this field. Scientific strategies, which have been successful will be confronted with less successful ones. A case is made for an organisational climate characterised by curiosity, intellectual freedom, scientific rigor and an overall commitment towards the improvement of medicine above all other values.