Speakers: Michelle Arkin PhD, Taylor Brew PhD, John Knox PhD, Daniel Erlanson PhD, Mark Smith PhD, Maureen Hillenmeyer PhD, Ian Seiple PhD, Chaitan Khosla PhD
Organizers: Toni Kline, PhD
Date: 2020-10-29- 10/30/2020
Time: See About the Topic Section
Registration fee: (USD): Regular: $0
Location: Online via Zoom
Major Sponsor:
Vendor show vendors registered to date:
Registration: http://www.PBSS.org
Registration deadline:2020-10-28  (it will close sooner if the seating cap is reached)

About the Topic

Proteins function in a physiological environment of access barriers, regulators, facilitators, and partners. In many therapeutic ecologies, the single drug-single target modal does not apply. To target these dynamics new modalities of both drug target and drug discovery are being explored. This Symposium will highlight some emerging ones.

Library screening, and modifications of known drugs have been engines of the discovery process for a century. Along with combinatorial chemistry and computer assisted drug discovery, these methods have brought thousands of molecules to the clinic. But a certain ”drug-like” sameness often appears across therapeutic groups. This may be for good reason (ADME, PK properties are optimized according to established conventions), but this sameness is at the expense of exploring truly novel chemical space. Happily, the discovery process is not static, and technologies are emerging to identify less obvious and less familiar-looking molecules. In the oncology and antibiotic spaces in particular, drugs arising from these methods might encounter less resistance. Much as we once naively talked about “junk DNA” and “undruggable” targets, we now have the insight and tools to understand the therapeutic potential inherent in complex biological systems.

Thursday, October 29, 2020 (all times US Pacific Time)

4:00 pm - 4:10 pm      Welcome & Introduction (Shichang Miao, Toni Kline)

4:10 pm - 4:35 pm      1. Stabilizing Protein-Protein Interactions: augmenting natural regulatory signals (Michelle Arkin, UCSF)

4:45 pm - 5:10 pm      2. Synthetic Lethality (Taylor Brew, Engine Biosciences)

5:20 pm – 5:45 pm     3. Allosteric inhibitors (John Knox, Revolution Medicines) 

5:55 pm - 6:10 pm      Break

6:10 pm - 6:35 pm      4. Fragment based drug discovery (Daniel Erlanson, Frontier Medicines)

6:45 pm - 7:00pm       Panel Discussion

Friday, October 30, 2020 (all times US Pacific Time)

9:00 am - 9:10 am       Introduction (Toni Kline)

9:10 am - 9:35 am       1. Discovery at the Academia/Biotech Borderline (Mark Smith, ChEM-H)

9:45 am - 10:10 am     2. AI meets Fermentation (Maureen Hillenmeyer, Hexagon Bio)

10:20 am - 10:30 am   Break

10:30 am -10:55 am    3. Access to Complex Natural Products (Ian Seiple, UCSF)

11:05 am -11:30 am    4. Directed Evolution (Chaitan Khosla, Stanford)

11:40 am - noon          Panel Discussion