BOSTON—Hundreds of business and scientific professionals converged on Beantown last week for IBC Life Sciences'14th annual drug discovery and development technology event, Drug Discovery & Development Week 2009. The three-day conference was held Aug. 3-6 at the Seaport World Trade Center Boston.
The conference—formerly known as DDT—received a name change and facelift this year. Unlike previous conferences, which provided a broad overview of drug discovery and development technology, this year's show offered a more focused look at strategies for successful discovery and smooth transition into the clinic. According to IBC Life Sciences, the conference was attended by a diverse mix of research scientists, project managers, finance and information system leaders, academics, business developers, financial analysts, engineering and technology analysts, consultants and others engaged in the business of drug discovery. While attendees were overwhelmingly from North America, the conference was also attended by a large contingent from Europe and Asia.
Keynote presenters included: Dr. K. Dane Wittrup, J.R. Mares professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Takashi Shoda, president and CEO of Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. in Japan; Dr. William B. Mattes, former director of toxicology at the Critical Path Institute; Dr. Michael Foley, director pf the Chemical Biology Platform at Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard University; and Dr. George D. Demetri, director of the Ludwig Center at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and the Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.Sponsors of Drug Discovery & Development Week included Roche, CambridgeSoft, Girindus, Attana Sensor Technologies, GE Healthcare, MDS Pharma Services, BlueSky Biotech, Sigma Life Science, the Automation Partnership, Grace Davison, Omni International, SA Biosciences, Millipore, HemoShear and Sage Publications.
The show included five targeted scientific conferences featuring practical strategies and forward-looking approaches intended to help attendees accelerate small molecules, antibody therapeutics and oligonucleotide therapeutics from early discovery to the clinic: "The Next Wave of Antibody Therapeutics;" "Oligonucleotide Therapeutics—From Concept to Implementation;" "New Frontiers in Cancer Drug Development;" "Targets in Context—Linking Targets to Diseases;" and finally, "Drug Safety Strategies to De-Risk Compounds." 
The oligonucleotide therapeutics conference proved to be especially popular. Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc., a second-generation RNA interference (RNAi) company developing novel therapeutics utilizing its proprietary Dicer Substrate Technology and dicer substrate RNA (DsiRNA) molecules, delivered a presentation titled "A Novel Dual Inhibitory Function Anti-HIV Envelop Aptamer-siRNA Chimera." Dr. John J. Rossi, Dicerna's co-founder, discussed RNA interference (RNAi) utility as a powerful mechanism that can be used to inhibit replication of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He highlighted dual inhibitory function aptamer-siRNA chimeras, developed such that both the aptamer and the DsiRNA have potent and long-lasting anti-HIV activity. Rossi also introduced a modular aptamer-DsiRNA strategy allowing "mixing and matching" of different DsiRNAs with a given aptamer.Finally, Dr. Hong Moulton, director of discovery research at AVI BioPharma Inc., a developer of RNA-based drugs, provided an overview of the company's peptide-conjugated morpholino oligomer (PPMO) technology for treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. According to Moulton, potential utility of PPMO chemistry for the systemic treatment of DMD has been demonstrated in mouse and non-human primate models. Preclinical studies have shown that the PPMO conjugates entered muscle cells, caused targeted exon-skipping, restored dystrophin and reduced pathology and improved function of muscles. Results from a single dose escalation clinical study of AVI-4658, a PMO therapeutic, demonstrate that a single intramuscular (IM) showed that injection of the drug into a small foot muscle of several DMD patients successfully induced dystrophin production in each patient as compared to placebo treated muscle in the contralateral foot.
About 75 manufacturers, tool providers, software companies and trade press conversed with attendees in the exhibit hall, where many new technologies were on display.
Grace Davison, an operating segment of W. R. Grace & Co., showcased its REVELERIS system, a flash chromatography system that streamlines the purification of new chemical/biological entities, thus enabling the discovery of new medicines. The REVELERIS system uses proprietary RevealX detection and SRC cartridge technologies to yield more samples with fewer impurities in less time, allowing pharmaceutical companies to bring important new drugs to market more quickly. The product, the culmination of a series of company acquisitions over the last few years, received a 2009 R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine.
Joanne Green, vice president of Grace Davison Discovery Sciences, noted that for decades, flash chromatography has been the primary technique used to purify new entities in the early stages of drug discovery. The purified compounds are then tested for their potential to be viable new drug candidates.
"A global product development effort was made to address an unmet need in the marketplace: helping synthetic and medicinal chemists streamline purifications of mixtures during the design and synthesis of promising new chemical entities," Green said. "We drew upon wider industry expertise and sought specific 'voice of customer' input when designing the product's features. Today, we are proud to receive this R&D 100 award as an affirmation of our innovation."
Elsewhere in the exhibit hall, In silicosolutions provider Genedata, demonstrated Genedata Screener 7.0, the newest version of an enterprise system for high-throughput screening (HTS) and high-content screening (HCS) analyses.
"Screener enables scientists and researchers to modernize their data management infrastructure and is fast becoming the lead discovery software platform of choice for forward-thinking pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies," said Dr. Othmar Pfannes, CEO of Genedata. "While this is due in large part to the system's inherent scalability and ease-of-use, Screener 7.0 sets new standards of excellence for statistically sound processing of extremely large and complex data sets and can easily integrate with multiple technologies."
Other announcements
TTP LabTech Ltd., a supplier of custom automation and laboratory instrumentation for the healthcare, biotech and pharmaceutical sectors based in Cambridge, England, announced the results of two collaborative studies using its renowned Acumen eX3 fluorescence microplate cytometer. The first collaboration involved the analysis of a hybridoma screen using both the FMAT 8100 HTS system (Applied Biosystems) and an Acumen eX3 laser scanning cytometer. Resultant trends for quantification of cell- and bead-based bound antibody were comparable between the two instruments. Data demonstrated that the Acumen is highly suitable for homogeneous binding assays and is a viable alternative to the discontinued FMAT assay detection instruments, according to TTP Labtech. In addition, the company said a recent collaboration with Nerviano Medical Sciences aimed to increase throughput of a complex four-color multiplexed cell cycle assay without a deleterious effect on data quality. The Acumen achieved a 4.5 fold increase in throughput and the results proved to be in good concordance with those of the Cellomics ArrayScan, the company said.
IBC Life Sciences announced at this year's show that the annual conference will convene in 2010 in San Diego. Further details are not yet available. 
