Dr. Christopher P. Austin, Director of the NIH Chemical Genomics Center will give the Keynote Presentation at GTCbio’s 3rd Assay Development & Screening Technologies Conference, June 5-6, 2008 in San Francisco, CA. Dr. Austin will present on “Novel Paradigms to Enable Druggability of Genomic and Orphan Disease Targets.”

The sequencing of the human genome provided both enormous opportunities for biomedical research, and daunting scientific, organizational, and funding challenges for both public and private sector research. The broad realization that small molecule compounds can be uniquely physiological probes of gene/protein function, and the need for focus on targets and diseases that are outside the traditional purview of the biopharma, has led to the development of robust chemical genomics capabilities in the public sector. The goals of these efforts – to develop chemical probes of novel gene and pathway functions, and starting points for the development of new therapeutics for rare and orphan human diseases – requires work almost entirely outside the currently “drugged” genome. At the NIH Chemical Genomics Center, the challenges of unprecedented targets and diseases have necessitated the development of novel paradigms for assay development, screening, cheminformatics, chemical optimization, data sharing, and collaborative project management. Several of these, including quantitative high-throughput screening, a robust chemical genomics browser, and policies to balance public release of compound activity data with downstream developability, will be discussed in this presentation. This expansion of small molecule science promises to catalyze both understanding of the genome, and drug development for unprecedented targets, thus advancing realization of the promise of the Human Genome Project for science and medicine.

GTCbio's 3rd Assay Development and Screening Technologies conference will provide attendees with critical information to utilize in the discovery and development of assays, while keeping them informed about the latest screening technologies for both high-throughput screening and high-content screening. Topics being covered include cell based assays, high throughput screening, high content screening, in vitro assays and screening, novel assay and screening technologies, and target validation.

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GTCbio organizes conferences specifically for the biomedical and biopharmaceutical industries. Our goal is to facilitate the exchange of biopharmaceutical and biomedical intelligence between industry leaders, academic and government organizations, and the financial community.
GTCbio is a subsidiary of Global Technology Community, LLC, a privately held company founded in 2002.