SBS 15th annual conference and exhibition

The 15th annual SBS conference and exhibition will be held in Lille, the capital of the Nord-Pas-de Calais region in Northern France. 2009 is a momentous year for SBS as it is the 15th anniversary of the formation of the Society and to celebrate the occasion this year’s theme will be ‘Bioassay & Technology Innovation: 15 Years of shaping Drug Discovery’.

Date: 26-30 April 2009
Venue: Lille Grand Palais, Lille, France
Website: www.sbsonline.org/i4a/pages/ index.cfm?pageid=3348

Questions such as; “How has HTS fuelled the clinical pipeline and filled the shelves of our doctors? How can we apply cutting-edge expertise to continue to address unmet clinical needs? And how can the expertise of SBS members be applied to new therapeutic modalities such as biopharmaceuticals and RNAi?” will all be addressed. Sessions have been themed around Drug-Discovery Strategy, Drug-Discovery Technology and Target Biology.

Drug-Discovery Strategy sessions will discuss topics such as:

• The diversity of hit identification tactics
• The challenges in delivering a quality candidate
• Drug repositioning

Drug-Discovery Technology sessions will discuss topics such as:

• Sample management
• Novel assay technologies
• Stem cells

And the Target Biology sessions will explore areas such as:

• The challenges faced when developing drugs against both tractable targets and targets considered to be intractable
• Small molecule drug discovery

Overall, the issues that hope to be challenged at the event include drug discovery for protein/protein interactions, amino acid transporters, and kinase drug discovery for diseases in addition to cancer. A full-day session will be devoted to anti-infective drug discovery, which will focus on both antiobiotic and antiviral therapeutics for diseases of both developed and less developed countries.

SBS 2009 will have three keynote speakers. They are:

• Professor Pierre Chambon – Honorary Director, Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology and Honorary Professor, College de France
• James Wells PhD – Professor in the departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California
• Frank Douglas PhD/MD – Senior Fellow, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and partner in Pure Tech Ventures, Kansas City

Throughout the event, there will also be many podium presentations, given by experts from all over the world. Some of the podium speakers include:

• Gary Bright, Cyntellect Inc, USA – Throughput cell purification of primary cells, human embryonic stem cells and accelerated cell line generation
• Sir Philip Cohen, University of Dundee, UK – Protein kinases of the innate immune system as drug targets
• Didier LeRoy, Merck Serono SA, Switzerland – Discovering new antimalarial drugs: Medicines for malaria venture’s vision
• Lee Rubin, Harvard University, USA – A role for stem cells in drug discovery
• Gary Smith, GSK, USA – Non-cancer kinase inhibitor discovery and development at GSK

Special interest groups will run at various times throughout the event. For more information on the exact times of the groups please see www.sbsonline.org/i4a/pages/ index.cfm?pageid=3487.

The group meetings will discuss:

• Academic Outreach
• ADMET
• Automation Quality Control
• Data and Image Analysis
• Microplate Standards Development Committee
• Sample Management
• Screen Design and Assay Technology
• Stem Cells in Drug Discovery

The whole event is being sponsored by Bio-Rad, Invitrogen, Perkin Elmer, Roche, Cisbio, BMG Labtech and SRU Biosystems.

There will also be a huge amount of exhibitors including:

• AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES
• TTP LabTech
• BD Biosciences
• Caliper Life Sciences, Inc.
• Tecan
• Nanion Technologies

Lille is an idyllic setting combining both ancient and modern history, gastronomy and science, renowned for its many medieval castles, palaces and citadels. Only 80 minutes from London, one hour from Paris and 33 minutes from Brussels, Lille is an ideal destination for an international conference.

If you plan to stay after the SBS conference, be aware that 1 May 2009 is a French holiday: Labour Day. It will be hard to find anything open in France (not only in Lille) on that day. The urban transportation system will not be running, but the French railways will run between Lille and Paris, and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.