Drug Discovery & Development - eCheminfo Autumn meeting, program, CFP, bursary awards


I enclose below our first announcement on the program for our
eCheminfo Autumn Community of Practice meeting on Drug Discovery &
Development which will be held at Bryn Mawr the week of October 15.
Included are descriptions of programs, workshops and forums, a CFP and
information on Bursary Awards.

The conference program will cover Structure-based Drug Design, chaired
by Jose Duca (Schering- Plough), Fragment-based Drug Discovery,
chaired by Maria Kontoyianni (Crystax Pharmaceuticals), Structural
Biology, chaired by Max Cummings (Johnson & Johnson PR&D) and
Predictive ADME/Toxicology, chaired by Tony Hopfinger (University of
New Mexico College of Pharmacy).

A variety of workshops will be held throughout the meeting. The
approach will be hands-on using an IT classroom and a set of workshops
led by application scientists using leading drug discovery software
packages.

The following two forums will be held at the meeting:
* Virtual Screening & Docking - Comparative Methodology & Best
Practice
* Forum & Workshop on International Cooperation in ADME/Tox

Early registration runs through end of June.

best regards
Barry Hardy
Community of Practice Manager
Douglas Connect
Switzerland
Email: barry.hardy -[at]- douglasconenct.com
Tel: +41 61 851 0170

Latest Advances in Drug Discovery & Development
15-18 October 2007
Community of Practice Meeting, Autumn 2007
a joint InnovationWell and eCheminfo InterAction Meeting
Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia
http://www.echeminfo.com/COMTY_conferences
(Last year's agenda is given at http://www.echeminfo.com/comty_conferenceprogram
)

eCheminfo Program
The program will consist of two primary components, seminar sessions
and workshops, accompanied by a significant amount of discussion and
networking activity. A focus of this meeting is to present and discuss
research involving methods and practical approaches which the
attendees will be able to take back to their labs and apply to their
projects. Last year's sessions were well attended and evaluated with a
mix of industry case-studies and applications, discussion of methods
and results and incorporation of the medicinal/synthetic chemistry
element with great emphasis on scientific discussions.

The seminar program will have four main conference sessions:

Structure-based Drug Design, chaired by Jose Duca (Schering-Plough)

Fragment-based Drug Discovery, chaired by Maria Kontoyianni (Crystax
Pharmaceuticals)

Structural Biology, chaired by Max Cummings (Johnson & Johnson PR&D)

Predictive ADME/Toxicology, chaired by Tony Hopfinger (University of
New Mexico College of Pharmacy)

Confirmed Invited Speakers for eCheminfo Program (Preliminary List)
Stephen Burley (SGX Pharmaceuticals), Georgia McGaughey (Merck),
Charles Lesburg (Schering-Plough), Woody Sherman (Schrodinger), Daniel
Cheney (Bristol Myers Squibb), Paul Labute (Chemical Computing
Group), Ajay Jain (UCSF), Alan Cheng (Amgen), Tony Hopfinger
(University of New Mexico), Anthony Klon (Pharmacopeia Drug
Discovery), Artem Cherkasov (University of British Columbia), Dennis
Pelletier (Pfizer), Chaohong Sun (Abbott), Xavier Barril (University
of Barcelona), Jose Duca (Schering-Plough), Terry Stouch

Workshops
A variety of workshops will be held throughout the meeting. The
approach will be hands-on using an IT classroom and a set of workshops
led by application scientists using leading drug discovery software
packages. Each workshop will be accompanied by practitioner-led
discussions of the methods worked on by the group.

Topics to be covered: Virtual Screening & Docking; Structure-based
Drug Design; Ligand Optimisation & Library Design; Structure Search,
Similarity and Property Estimation; Data Mining, Analysis &
Visualisation; Integration of Cheminformatics & Bioinformatics Tools &
Data; Latest advances in ADME & Predictive Toxicology;
Pharmacokinetics & Pharmacodynamics and Physiological-based
Simulation.

Forums
The following two forums will be held during the meeting:
A. Mon Oct 15th - Virtual Screening & Docking - Comparative
Methodology & Best Practice
More Information at: http://barryhardy.blogs.com/cheminfostream/2007/03/virtual_screeni.html

B. Thursday, Friday Oct 18th,19th - Forum & Workshop on International
Cooperation in ADME/Tox
More Information at: http://barryhardy.blogs.com/cheminfostream/2007/03/international_c.html

InnovationWell program
http://innovationwell.net/
In our initial community of practice meetings including our
InnovationWell meeting last October at Bryn Mawr, Philadelphia we have
discussed recent and coming developments of relevance to drug, life
science and healthcare product development, drug and patient safety
and translational medicine.

This year's InnovationWell program at Bryn Mawr will have themes
running throughout the meeting covering areas of innovation (systems
biology, toxicology, metabolomics, biomarkers, diagnostics, emerging
biotech & nanotech, knowledge management) and which will have a second
topic division by session in terms of therapeutic area (diabetes,
oncology, cardiology, anti-inflammatory, anti-viral). Each session
will include discussion leadership from a therapeutic specialty
providing a clinical perspective on the deployment and integration of
emerging areas of life science, diagnostics and knowledge management
technologies so as to progress Critical Path goals in clinical
development and safety.

Call for Contributed Talks & Posters to eCheminfo Program
We invite contributed papers from members of academic, government
research and commercial organizations on areas of new research and
innovation involving drug discovery research informatics. The work
presented should involve innovative new method development or
application to drug discovery problems and involving methods from
computational chemistry, computational biology, cheminformatics or
bioinformatics. Studies including experimental work in medicinal
chemistry, screening, experimental toxicology, pre-clinical
evaluation, lead optimisation and translational medicine are welcome.

Abstracts (300-500 words) should be submitted to echeminfo -[at]-
douglasconnect.com by 30 April 2007, and be accompanied by a short
biography of the presenting author (300-500 words). Abstracts
approved by the scientific organizing committee will be selected for
scheduling on the conference program and in meeting poster sessions.
Authors will be notified of acceptance by 31 May.

Bursary Awards for eCheminfo Program
Bursary Awards will be used to support the attendance of a selection
of academic young investigators at the meeting and workshops.
Applicants can be working in any area of research related to drug
discovery at the postdoctoral, graduate student and senior
undergraduate levels.

To apply for the bursary please send an email with a) your abstract
and biography (300-500 words each), b) your CV of 1-2 pages, c) a
short description of your interests and career motivations related to
drug discovery (300-500 words) to echeminfo -[at]- douglasconnect.com
by 30 April 2007. The recipients of the bursary awards will be
selected based on an evaluation of the quality and innovation of the
described research and the potential positive impact of attendance at
the meeting on their research and career progress. Recipients will be
notified of acceptance by 31 May.

Barry Hardy
Community of Practice Manager
Douglas Connect
Switzerland
Tel: +41 61 851 0170

.