8^th International Conference Conference
on Drug Discovery and Therapy February 2025, Dubai, UAE

The pharmaceutical industry, standing on the shoulders' of academia, has been the driver of drug discovery and development by managing the knowledge for profit. It is now clear that the cost of research is escalating by leaps and bounds, while the number of new molecular entities and the number of drugs approved are at their lowest. Academia has recently become a vital contributor to the otherwise dwindling drug discovery pipeline by establishing in-house high throughput drug screening centers to generate leads. The pharmaceutical industry, in turn, has come to understand the depth of target biology, systems biology and pathobiology knowledge that resides in academia, and recognizes the need for close interaction and collaboration between the two institutions for better targets to pursue and to lower the attrition during efficacy and safety assessment phase of drug development. What we now see evolving is the much needed collaborative spirit between these two diverse institutions in closing this risk-reward gap as exemplified by a number of industry-academia collaborative agreements that are being put in place. With great many academic institutions becoming engaged in drug discovery research, the time is ripe to find ways to bridge the gap, and conquer the 'valley of death' in new drug lead discovery. The goal of this session is to understand the role of academia and CROs in translational research, the guiding principles that define the pharmaceutical industry and Academia, review and analysis of current and prospective partnerships between academia and the pharmaceutical industry, a roadmap for developing a win-win scenario for technology transfer, and proven ways to strengthen drug discovery partnerships between Pharma and Academia.

Cancer remains the second leading cause of death both in industrialized and non-industrialized countries and is increasing in incidence elsewhere in the world as the population ages. The enormous advances in knowledge, science and technology in the 21st century have facilitated the process of globalization with the aim of better quality of life for all. The development of more effective, efficient, less risky and less toxic drugs for treatment of cancer has been a major human endeavor for the past 50 years. With the introduction of the "targeted drugs" and currently available treatment regimens, 5-year survival rate among the adults for all cancers has increased to approximately 65%. The improvement in the survival rate of childhood leukemia (ALL), being the most fatal childhood cancer, over the past 35 years is one of the great success stories of cancer treatment. In the 1960s, while less than 5 percent of children with ALL survived for more than five years, today, about 85% of children live five years or more. The 7th International Conference on Drug Discovery and Therapy is an effort to address all areas towards anti-cancer agents. Emphasis was given to drugs that have recently been introduced into the cancer therapy including: inhibitors of chromatin function, target-based inhibitors of signal transduction (tyrosine kinase inhibitors) Ê and cyclindependent kinases, and angiogenesis inhibitors acting on metalloproteinases, epithelial cell growth, and angiogenesis stimulation. There will be presentations from contributors working on hormone synthesis inhibitors and hormone-receptors blockers, RNA interference, role of pharmacogenomics in anti-cancer drug development and computer aided-strategies for anti-cancer drug design and development and related areas.

The anti-infective drugs which have recently been approved for clinical use, the antiviral agents, following the trend set by anti-bacterials (antibiotics) a few decades ago, have taken the lead. In recent years, more than forty antiviral compounds have been formally licensed, more than half of which are used in the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections (AIDS). Others have been licensed for the treatment of herpesvirus infections, hepatitis B and C, and influenza. For other virus infections, i.e. pox (variola, vaccinia), hemorrhagic fever virus, picornavirus, flavivirus, papilloma- and adenovirus infections, effective antiviral drugs still have to be developed or submitted to clinical trials. Even for those virus infections that can already be controlled by therapeutic modalities, the search for additional molecular targets and new treatment strategies should be pursued. The development of antiviral agents requires a multidisciplinary approach encompassing many different fields, such as molecular modeling, medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology and clinical medicine. Most importantly, the development of antiviral agents may learn from (and should not been dissociated from) other anti-infectives, in particular those compounds targeted at bacterial infections (i.e. tuberculosis) and protozoal infections (i.e. malaria) and other parasitic diseases, as evidence is growing for compounds trespassing these borders, both from a structure-activity relationship (SAR) and mode of action viewpoint.

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has changed the landscape of HIV-related care in both the developed and developing countries. The availability and widespread use of HAART have resulted in a number of achievements as well as challenges. Since the early days of antiretroviral therapy, adherence has emerged as a milestone to success. There are factors militating against adherence to antiretroviral therapy among HIV-infected individuals particularly in the resource - limited settings. Limited laboratory infrastructure, lack of trained manpower and high cost of laboratory monitoring test pose a major problem to implementing HIV therapy in resource-poor settings. The disclosure of HIV serostatus is a difficult emotional task creating opportunity for support and rejection. The 7th ICDDT will be held in Dubai in February 2016 will address all areas pertinent to this endeavour, concentrating on leads that arise from highly active antiretroviral therapy, effect on the quality of life, laboratory monitoring of patients on HAART and HIV serostatus disclosure. There were presentations in varying subjects of Anaemia, Comparative analysis of malaria parasite density using actual and assumed white blood cell counts, Reference percentiles of haematological and biochemical iron values of blood donors, Prostate cancer diagnosis, Anti-microbiological drug resistance and other interesting topics in the area of Biomedical Science. The list catered to a number of contributions that stem from other sources, aiming to provide a well-informed and productive forum for examination of as wide a range as possible of approaches developed in disparate laboratories worldwide.

• Asymmetric Synthesis
• Organometalic Chemistry
• Carbohydrates
• Spectroscopy
• Medicinal Chemistry

Many biologically active molecules are very active in vitro, but never reach the clinic because of lack of absorption and/or poor in vivo stability. Although a range of delivery systems is available, the delivery of sensitive drugs such as peptides, nucleic acid based therapeutics (including antisense DNA and siRNA), simple and complex carbohydrates, and synthetic vaccines presents a major challenge to the pharmaceutical industry. Industry experts agree that approximately 10% of the costs of drug development program should be allocated to aspects of drug delivery. New developments in drug delivery research are likely to have enormous economic impacts upon the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. In fact, drug delivery research represents a US$70 billion a year industry. Centres for Drug Delivery have been established all over the world to promote research, development and training in drug delivery science. There has also been a focus on realizing the commercial potential of innovative molecules (e.g. peptides, nucleic acid based therapies and vaccines) or delivery technologies that are developed from the centres' research. Research in drug delivery is multidisciplinary, requiring knowledge of how drugs work, their chemical and physical properties, how these properties affect the drugs in vivo behaviour, and what could be done to potentially solve any delivery problems associated with drug molecules. Therefore, drug delivery research necessitates interdisciplinary collaborations both at a national and international level.

• De-risking Drug discovery
• Hit to Lead and Lead Optimization

The pace and performance of modern drug discovery and development is based on effective use of a range of technologies. From initial screening to lead identification and drug delivery, emerging technologies are accelerating the drug development. These technologies are also contributing immensely to improvements in the quality and productivity of drug manufacturing. Nanotechnology and ICT are among the most exciting additions in the technology paradigm which hold great promises for future. It is expected that these technologies will not only decrease the cost of the drug development but also reduce the time required for a lead molecule to emerge as a drug for clinical use. This exciting track will showcase the R&D in emerging technologies to facilitate the drug discovery development process. Based on the very nature of the topic, the speakers and other presenters will include biomedical engineers, physicists, ICT experts, as well as medicinal chemists and health professionals. This important track will be of great interest for scientists, especially with reference to introducing new cutting edge technologies many of which are still not known widely. The 7th ICDDT will be held in Dubai in February 2016 addresse all areas pertinent to this endeavor concentrating on leads that arise from application of the new knowledge at the cellular and molecular level. The other areas highlighted the impact of Nanomedicine (Application of nanotechnology in Human Health) on diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Nanomedicine is an emerging and expanding field with innumerable applications and may play an important role in translational research or moving from laboratory research to clinical practice.

Targeted therapies using biological, such as TNF antagonists, are approved worldwide for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases. Despite the success of biological in the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases, clinical experience revealed that not all patients respond equally, and that there are 'responders' as well as 'nonresponders'. Given the destructive nature of chronic inflammatory diseases, the risk of adverse effects and considerable costs for therapy, there is a strong need to make predictions on success before the start of therapy, aiming towards a personalized form of medicine, whereby a specific therapy will be applied that is best suited to an individual patient. The concept of a personalized form of medicine has attracted interest in the field of drug development to implement biomarker strategies to search for molecular and clinical criteria to dissect clinical responders from non-responders. It is anticipated that implementation of biomarker strategies in drug development will allow: Accelerated drug development and reducing cost by utilizing pharmacodynamic and efficacy biomarkers for rational decision making. Defining enriched populations for clinical trials. Reducing trial size and number through the use of more clinically relevant biomarker endpoints. Utilizing safety markers to identify susce`ptible populations. Enabling therapeutic drug monitoring. Delivering companion diagnostics, thereby driving product differentiation. To explain the unresponsiveness of anti-TNF antibodies in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, essentially two phases of unresponsiveness might be identified: a primary phase directly after the start of treatment, and a secondary phase that develops in initial responders during the course of therapy. The primary phase of unresponsiveness is oriented on the pharmacodynamic and mechanistic aspects of drug intervention. The latter is explained by the formation of anti-drug antibodies (=anti-anti-TNF antibodies) in a subset of patients. This lecture addressed studies related to pharmacodynamic and immunogenicity issues of treatment with TNF-antagonists in RA towards personalized medicine approaches in rheumatoid arthritis.

Nanotechnology has already begun to revolutionize medicine. Nanotechnology involves the use of materials with fundamental length scales in the nanometer dimension which demonstrate significantly changed properties compared to micron structured materials. Such materials can include particles, fibers, grain sizes, etc. This session highlighted the advancements nanotechnology is making in medicine in such fields as disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment including (but not limited to) drug delivery, tissue engineering, implants, sensors, cancer treatment, and toxicity.

• Successful Drug Discovery from the Research Lab to the Marketplace
• Global Roundup of Pharmaceutical Research capabilities and Opportunities
• Global Discovery Outsourcing
• Generic Pharmaceuticals: Challenges and Opportunities
• Regulatory Affairs
• Other Areas of Pharmaceutical R & D

Proteomics, the large-scale analysis of proteins, contributes greatly to our understanding of gene function in the post-genomic era. Proteomics can be divided into three main areas: (1) protein micro-characterization for large-scale identification of proteins and their post-translational modifications; (2) 'differential display' proteomics for comparison of protein levels with potential application in a wide range of diseases; and (3) studies of protein–protein interactions using techniques such as mass spectrometry or the yeast two-hybrid system. Proteomics technologies are under continuous improvements and new technologies are introduced. Nowadays high throughput acquisition of proteome data is possible. The young and rapidly emerging field of bioinformatics in proteomics is introducing new algorithms to handle large and heterogeneous data sets and to improve the knowledge discovery process. Peptide libraries offer a valuable means for providing functional information regarding protein-modifying enzymes and protein interaction domains. Crucially, new computational and biochemical tools have emerged that facilitate identification of interaction partners and substrates for proteins on the basis of their peptide selectivity profiles. Proteomics can be viewed as an experimental approach to explain the information contained in genomic sequences in terms of the structure, function, and control of biological processes and pathways. Proteomics attempts to study biological processes comprehensively by the systematic analysis of the proteins expressed in a cell or tissue. The field of Bioinformatics provides tools we can use to understand disease processes through the analysis of molecular sequence data. More broadly, bioinformatics facilitates our understanding of the basic aspects of biology including development, metabolism, adaptation, to the environment, genetics and evolution.

• Stem Cells
• Gene Therapy
• Tissue Engineering
• Recent Developments in Regenerated Medicine

The last decade has seen a profound increase in our capacity to treat diseases and conditions affecting women. The discovery and development of new and more effective drugs have played a crucial role in this achievement. In the 7th ICDDT, recent advances made in the discovery of therapeutics and promising new hopes for the improvement of women's health will be reviewed and discussed. Major areas that will be addressed include; treatment of infertility, endometriosis, preterm parturition and cancer. This cutting-edge project will involve multidisciplinary approaches from outstanding scientists across the world.