Welcome to Drug Discovery 2021

ELRIG’s annual Drug Discovery meeting is still Europe’s largest meeting for life sciences industry professionals and will return in the autumn of 2021, to celebrate the innovation and efforts of our industry and the scientific successes that we have shared throughout the period of the pandemic.

Drug Discovery 2021 promises to be a particularly special event, providing a platform for the whole drug discovery community to meet at a free to attend, in-person event, where members of ELRIG’s community may:

• Re-connect with colleagues, as well as hear stories from scientists who have been responsible for combatting COVID-19 in the session tracks on infection and diagnostics.
• Re-invent the process of drug discovery, by building diverse partnerships with even greater emphasis on efficiency, automation, and remote operation in our two session tracks of screening and chemistry.
• Re-imagine and create a new vision for drug discovery, with insights from our innovation and disruptive strategies tracks.

2020 was a year of challenge, but it was also a turning point for our industry, as our community came together and was at the forefront of the scientific effort to overcome and manage the COVID virus.  Together we made unprecedented scientific progress, which we will recognize and celebrate at Drug Discovery 2021.

Day 1 – Tuesday 19 October 2021

NEW APPROACHES IN INFECTION BIOLOGY 

Conference Director: Ian Waddell 

Session Chairs: David Pallin (Charles River Laboratories) & Adrian Goldman (University of Helsinki)

The fight against infectious diseases and the need for innovative therapies are becoming more important every year. The threats to humans and indeed animals health posed by (re)-emerging viruses, by the spread of anti-bacterial resistance, and by the spread of protozoan parasites like malaria in a warming world are just some of the more significant challenges that will need to be addressed by scientists in the coming decades. 

In this track we will cover:

• Ongoing work to identify novel therapies against COVID-19 and other viruses. 
• Approaches to develop novel anti-bacterial therapies to stem the rise of resistance and extend the effective life of established drugs. 
• Approaches based on targeting the key first step in bacterial virulence: adhesion to host proteins.
• Novel approaches to combat endotoxins as they continue to be associated with poor patient outcomes in the clinic.
• An approach to developing novel drugs against protozoan parasites: targeting unique, essential organelles in the parasite.

 

DIAGNOSTIC TESTING AND BIOMARKERS – THE NEW NORMAL?

Conference Director: Chun-wa Chung

Session Chairs: Nikki Carter (Excalibur Healthcare) & Emily Adams (Mologic and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine)

Track Sponsors:

 

 

 

In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, diagnostic testing and biomarkers are terms that the world beyond scientific and medical professionals have come to appreciate as part of the ‘new normal’. These tests have been critical elements in containing the virus and preventing further spread. The field of infectious disease diagnostics has never experienced such an expedited flurry of activity and expansion of diagnostic tests available. While the COVID-19 pandemic may be responsible for ‘normalising’ diagnostic testing in the global population, biomarker research and clinical diagnostic testing have been a critical part of drug design, development, and post-approval commercialisation for many years. 

In this track we will cover:

• Applications of diagnostic testing and biomarkers.
• Applications and the development of diagnostic testing and biomarkers.       
• Whether diagnostic tests and biomarkers become the new normal.

 

INNOVATIONS IN CHEMISTRY TO DISCOVER NEW MEDICINES: APPROACHES TO DRUGGING RNA

Conference Director: Simon Ward

Session Chairs: Wesley Blackaby (Servier) & Oliver Rausch (Storm Therapeutics)

The approvals of the siRNA drug Patisiran and the RNA splicing modulator Risdiplam, for the treatment of hereditary transthyretin amyloidosisas and spinal muscular atrophy respectively, has heralded a new era of drug discovery expanding the druggable genome outside of the realm of proteins to now include RNA as a drug target in its own right. 

In this track we will cover: 

• The breadth of different approaches and modalities currently being explored to drug RNA, including case studies from bench to bedside.
• The cutting-edge technologies that are being deployed to discover the next generation of RNA targeting medicines.  

 

ALZHEIMER’S RESEARCH UK

Conference Director: Ian Waddell

Session Chairs: John Isaac (Janssen Neuroscience) & David Reynolds (ARUK)

Despite huge unmet medical needs, there has been limited progress in discovering and developing new treatments for dementia, in particular, therapeutics that slow or stop the progression of underlying disease. Progress has been hampered by a lack of well-validated targets and the concomitant increased risk of failure at clinical proof concept, which has led to a number of large pharma exiting this area. 

Alzheimer’s Research UK is the UK’s leading dementia research charity that provide funding across the whole spectrum of biomedical research, to build the understanding of the causes of all dementias and to improve diagnosis, prevention, risk reduction, and treatment. With a mission to identify a life-changing treatment for people with dementia by 2025, Alzheimer’s Research UK is playing a major role in the ecosystem by facilitating innovative research on targets for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. 

Investing in the multi-million-pound drug discovery initiatives as the Dementia Consortium and the Drug Discovery Alliance, and then in the UK Dementia Research Institute, Alzheimer’s Research UK facilitated projects are now leading the way in providing much needed target discovery and validation; moreover, the charity is enabling assay development and early drug discovery activities that are re-invigorating dementia medicines discovery. 

In this track we will cover:

• Leading work in Alzhiemers research.
• Alzheimer’s Research UK’s approach to facilitating drug discovery in dementia.

 

DAY 2 – 20th October 2021

SCREENING INNOVATION TO ENHANCE DRUG DISCOVERY

Conference Director: Ian Waddell

Session Chairs: Ian Storer (AstraZeneca) & Jeff Jerman (LifeArc) 

Track Sponsors:

Despite recent progress, many candidate drugs still fail to demonstrate sufficient efficacy and safety in clinical studies. Furthermore, there is also an increased need to identify hits to a growing array of novel and complex proteins and phenotypes, alongside the pressure to develop approaches to enable traditionally intractable targets. As a result, advances are required to accelerate the discovery and optimisation of high-quality disease-relevant starting points, including improvements to early screening systems and translational assays to minimise late-stage drug attrition.  

In this track we will cover:

• Developments in screening strategies and methods to meet modern drug discovery challenges. 
• Advances in technologies including screening automation, the impact of AI on hit identification efficiency, as well as application of information rich endpoints and human disease-relevant test systems.
• Improved methods for the discovery of high-quality macromolecules.

 

INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES SUPPORTING DRUG DISCOVERY

Conference Director: Simon Chell

Session Chairs:  Kenny Simmen (Johnson & Johnson Innovation) & Laura Dickens (UKRI – Medical Research Council) 

Global healthcare challenges experienced over the last 18 months have accelerated the rate of change within an already innovation-led industry. Academic and pharmaceutical healthcare R&D has needed to adapt to understanding, diagnosing and treating new areas of disease, whilst embracing the ways of working with more collaborative agility and flexibility. 

In this track we will cover:

• Changes in the ways we conduct research. 
• Illustrate potential lasting shifts in practise and disease area focus, and consider where research on drug and vaccine research may be headed. 
• How we pursue drug discovery through novel partnership models.
• How progress through discovery and development pipelines may become more agile and rapid. 
• How we can consider diversity in health research and clinical trials. 

 

DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Conference Director: Chun-wa Chung

Session Chairs:  Carolina Wahlby (Uppsala University) & Mark Roberts (Tessella)

Whilst the drug discovery world has always been at the forefront of emerging technology, the next decade is set to be the backdrop for a convergence of enabling technologies that together will accelerate R&D into exciting new areas. Our ability to measure smaller and smaller structures whilst retaining spatial relationships and dynamics, coupled with the computing power to analyse the resulting datasets means we can directly observe relevant biological processes rather than abstracting away from them. Huge leaps in computing power and machine learning and rapidly advancing graph techniques mean that in-silico discovery approaches can work hand in hand with experimental techniques to explore and manipulate molecular space at enormous scale, and the emerging prospect of true quantum computing raises the prospect of moving beyond simulations and abstractions of molecular interactions. 

In this track we will cover:

• Many of the key trends in the space of disruptive technologies.
• How our ability to measure smaller and smaller structures coupled with increased computing power can revolutionise how we look at biological processes.
• How breakthroughs in machine learning and advancing graph techniques will allow us to combine in silico and experimental techniques to further our ability to manipulate molecular space.
• How the advent of quantum computing may allow us to gain less abstracted understanding molecular interactions.

 

BPS Opportunities and Challenges of Drugging the Undruggable

Conference Director: Chun-wa Chung

Session Chairs:  TBC

In the world of drug discovery, “undruggable” targets are proteins that are considered too challenging to bind with conventional molecules. With the rapid pace of scientific advancement, however, these “undruggable” targets now represent a promising new area of research thanks to the development of novel targeting strategies.  In this session, topics will focus upon novel screening, imaging and computer-aided drug discovery methods that are being developed to identify and target these hard-to-reach proteins.  The session will also include a presentation by Dr Daren Austin, the winner of the 2020 BPS Sir James Black Award.