Chi Podcasts

An-Dinh Nguyen interviews Jan Vijg of Albert Einstein College of Medicine on June 12, 2014. Dr. Vijg will be a featured speaker at the Single-Cell Sequencing conference, part of the Next-Generation Dx Summit, August 19-21 in Washington, DC. Topics include the evolution of single-cell sequencing technologies from microarrays through next-generation sequencing, improvements to amplification, challenges researchers still face, detection of somatic mutations in tumor tissues, single-cell analysis of aging and more.

Dr. Kimberly Strong of the Medical College of Wisconsin speaks to CHI patient attitudes towards receiving genomic information, access to information, and the future of genomic medicine. Dr. Strong will be speaking at Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Inaugural Inherited Disease Diagnostics Conference, taking place August 19-20, 2014 in Washington, DC as part of the Next Generation Dx Summit. Learn more at http://www.nextgenerationdx.com/Inherited-Disease-Diagnostics

Dr. Bruce Korf of the University of Alabama at Birmingham speaks to CHI about some of the educational challenges in genomic medicine implementation, the educational needs of physicians, and how he sees genomics being used clinically. Dr. Korf will be speaking at Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Inaugural Inherited Disease Diagnostics Conference, taking place August 19-20, 2014 in Washington, DC as part of the Next Generation Dx Summit. Learn more at http://www.nextgenerationdx.com/Inherited-Disease-Diagnostics

Kip Harry, Conference Director at Cambridge Healthtech Institute discusses Ubiquitin Proteasome System drug discovery with Dr. Benedikt Kessler, Ph.D., University Research Lecturer, Ubiquitin Proteolysis Group, Target Discovery Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford Discussion Questions Include: • What are the most present opportunities in this space? (Another way to ask that): What are some of the most promising UPS targets currently being investigated, and within which indications? • What challenges have slowed the progress of generating lead molecules targeting various components of the UPS? • Why are Deubiquitinases (DUBs) emerging as viable therapeutic targets? • Are there drug discovery challenges specific to targeting DUB enzymes vs. ligases? If so, what are they? • What are some novel tools and technologies being developed/implemented to overcome some of these challenges? • What do you hope to convey to attendees during your lecture this fall at the Ubiquitin Proteasom

Dr. Teri Melese, Associate Professor of Medicine, and Assistant Vice Chancellor of Industry Alliances at the University of California, San Diego shares insights into the evolution, challenges, opportunities, and outlook for academic-industry partnerships. Dr. Melese will be moderating a discussion on this topic during the 11th Annual Strategic Alliance Management Congress, taking place, May 5-7, 2014 in Philadelphia. She'll be joined by a notable panel of the industry's best, including Anthony Marshall of IBM, Sylvaine Cases of Sanofi-Aventis, Noah Leibowitz of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Yvonne Tran of Schrödinger. Learn more about the event at http://www.healthtech.com/ams Discussion questions include: What changes have been noted with these types of partnerships over the past decade? What challenges exist that are harder to overcome? What are clear-cut and feasible opportunities? What will the panel discussion Optimizing the Impact of Academic-Industry Alliances on Innovation convey to attendees dur

An-Dinh Nguyen interviews Valerie A. Schneider of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), NIH on April 4, 2014. Dr. Schneider will be a speaker at TCGC: The Clinical Genome Conference, June 10-12, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Topics include updates to the human reference genome assembly, the Genome Reference Consortium (GRC), the relationship of the assembly to annotation and genome browsers, new assembly features and their potential impact on clinical analyses and interpretation of results.

An-Dinh Nguyen interviews John Pfeifer of Washington University School of Medicine on April 3, 2014. Dr. Pfeifer will be a keynote speaker at TCGC: The Clinical Genome Conference, June 10-12, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Topics include factors that have prevented payers from reimbursing clinical next-generation sequencing testing by laboratories, the evolution of reimbursement models for labs, tailoring testing to ensure payment by insurance companies, clinical NGS to enhance patient care and more. http://www.clinicalgenomeconference.com/TCGC_content.aspx?id=134465&libID=134413

CHI recently spoke with Dr. Chas Bountra, Head of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), and Professor of Translational Medicine and an Associate Head of Medical Sciences at the University of Oxford. In this podcast, Dr. Bountra discusses how the SGC is impacting drug discovery and their work on developing novel probes, specifically for epigenetic targets. Dr. Bountra also gives a sneak peek into his keynote lecture joining the Structure-Based Drug Design and Chemical Biology for Target Validation meetings, May 22 in Boston.

An-Dinh Nguyen interviews David Galas of Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute on March 27, 2014. Dr. Galas will be a keynote speaker at TCGC: The Clinical Genome Conference, June 10-12, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Topics include the challenges of translating genomic data into diagnostics and therapeutics, the promise of computational biology approaches for overcoming those barriers, the possible impact of extracellular RNA and the microbiome on human biology and more.

Christina Lingham interviews on Luis Álvarez-Vallina of Aarhus University on March 27, 2014. Dr. Álvarez-Vallina will be speaking at the Phage and Yeast Display track at PEGS, on May 5-6 in Boston, Mass. Topics include phage display, in vivo selection of antibodies. tumor targeting, novel tumor-associated antigens, antibody-based therapeutics, targeted delivery.

Nandini Kashyap interviews Dr. Geeti Gangal of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research on March 26, 2014. Dr. Gangal will be speaking during the 2nd Annual Formulation and Drug Delivery conference which is taking place on May 21-22, 2014 as part of World Pharma Congress in Boston, MA Topics Include: Poor Solubility, Bioavailability, Oral Drug delivery, Preclinical animal models, Drug Absorption, Dissolution Prediction and Experimentation, Discovery and development interface, Solubilization, Formulation material science, Enabling formulation, Enabling technologies, Nanotechnology, Characterization, Drug and Product stability, In vitro-In vivo correlation (IVIVC) .

Christina Lingham interviews Rakesh Dixit of MedImmune on March 26, 2014. Dr. Dixit will be speaking at the Advancing Bispecific Antibodies to the Clinic for Oncology track at PEGS, on May 7-8 in Boston, Mass. Topics include bispecific antibodies for oncology, engineering innovations for engineering bispecific antibodies, and bispecific platforms currently under development.

Nandini Kashyap interviews Dr. Nicholas Meanwell, Executive Director of Department of Chemistry at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. on March 25, 2014. Dr. Meanwell will be delivering keynote presentation during the 3rd Annual Property-Based Drug Design, May 22-23, 2014 at Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel in Boston, MA. Topics Include: Physicochemical properties in drug discovery and development, Bio-physical properties, Property based drug design, drug design, Solid State properties, Solubility, Permeability, Lipophilicity, Physicochemical descriptors, High-Throughput Physicochemical Screens, Developability of molecules, Polymorphism, Discovery workflow

Christina Lingham interviews Robert Mabry of Adimab on March 25, 2014. Dr. Mabry will be speaking at the Engineering Bispecific Antibodies track at PEGS, on May 8-9 in Boston, Mass. Topics include common issues and engineering solutions for engineering bispecific antibodies, emerging applications for bispecifics and the growth of bispecific platforms currently under development.

Kip Harry, Conference Director at Cambridge Healthtech Institute discusses epigenetic drug discovery with Dr. Matthew Fuchter, Senior Lecturer of Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry at the Imperial College London. Questions Include: • From an inhibitor development standpoint, what methods do you use for discovery to lead? • Why do you choose natural products to aid in targeting epigenetic modifiers and is there limited chemical matter in this space? • What opportunities are there for infectious disease and other indications? • What has ignited all this interest in developing second generation epigenetic inhibitors – particularly targeting Histone Methyltransferases, Demethylases and BET Bromodomains? • Have we learned anything from approved compounds? • What are major challenges seen in the development of novel epigenetic inhibitors? • What about safety and toxicity of compounds – is this a major concern? • What talks/topics are you looking forward to during the Epigenetic Inhibitor Discovery Meeting? •

Dr. Gerald Tanoury from Vertex, featured speaker at CHI's 'Efficient Process Chemistry' meeting May 22-24, 2014 in Boston, speaks about dealing with two challenging chemical steps in the scale-up of HCV protease inhibitor, Telaprevir, which was launched in 2011 as a new treatment for hepatitis C infection. Tanoury also discusses Telaprevir's route development in the context of his views on what makes an efficient route and shares with the interviewer, Dr. Anjani Shah, Conference Director for CHI, what he is interested in learning more about at the meeting.

Dr. Erlanson of Carmot Therapeutics and Dr. Zartler of Tessera Consulting speak with CHI's Dr. Shah on March 14, 2014 about new strategies for fragment linking, different companies' fragment-based campaigns, and types of PPI-directed compounds advancing in the clinic. Dr. Erlanson will be speaking at the Fragment Based Drug Discovery meeting on April 24-25, 2014 in San Diego, part of CHI's Drug Discovery Chemistry event about Fishing for Fragments to Complement Known Binders. Dr. Zartler was the scientific advisor to Dr. Shah for the Protein-Protein Interactions meeting taking place April 23-24, 2014 in San Diego, part of CHI's Drug Discovery Chemistry event. Drs. Erlanson and Zartler are also co-instructors of one of the dinner workshops at the event, Advancing Tools and Technologies for Fragment-Based Design on April 24, 2014. Erlanson and Zartler are also co-editors of the Practical Fragments blog: http://practicalfragments.blogspot.com/

An-Dinh Nguyen interviews Benjamin Breton and Mark Adams of Good Start Genetics on March 7, 2014. Mr. Breton and Dr. Adams will be co-instructing the pre-conference workshop, An Embarrassment of Riches: Choosing and Implementing Cloud Infrastructure to Replace On-Premises HPC for Next-Generation Sequence Analysis, and Dr. Adams will be speaking during a shared session for the Cloud Computing and Data Security meetings at Bio-IT World Conference & Expo 2014, April 29-May 1 in Boston, MA. Topics include optimizing genome sequencing data projects via cloud-based computing, the evolution of commercial bioinformatics efforts that manage genomic and genetic data, challenges ranging from systems integration to legal and regulatory requirements in clinical settings and more.

This May 21-22 at the Structure-Based Drug Design conference in Boston, Dr. Jason Burch, a Medicinal Chemist at Genentech will give a talk on structure-based design and property optimization of potent and selective pyrazole carboxamide interleukin-2 inducible t-cell kinase (itk) inhibitors for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. CHI recently spoke with Dr. Burch about why he chose to pursue ITK inhibitors, important considerations for developing these types of inhibitors, and what techniques were used to improve pharmaceutical properties of the lead matter. Dr. Burch also discusses how advances in genomics and demand for personalized treatments has changed drug design techniques.

An-Dinh Nguyen interviews Christopher Mason of Weill Cornell Medical College on February 21, 2014. Dr. Mason will be speaking during the Clinical Genomics meeting at Bio-IT World Conference & Expo 2014, April 29-May 1 in Boston, MA. Topics include the use of bioinformatics methods in genomics to study diseases, researching the human genome’s functional elements through aggressive tumors and other extreme cases, applying an evolutionary perspective and more. Learn more at: http://www.bio-itworldexpo.com