The team at Drug Discovery Today are delighted to present the new Podcast section for the website. We hope, over the coming months, to cover issues of the utmost importance and interest to drug discovery professionals. The topics will encompass every aspect of drug discovery, including discussions on the discovery environment, pipeline issues, new technologies, ethical issues and regulatory aspects, amongst others.
We will feature some of the biggest names in Science and Technology and hope to provide interviews that are thought-provoking and informative. As always, with Drug Discovery Today, we believe that you, the reader (and listener), should have a strong say in its content. So if you have a suggestion for a topic that you think we should cover, please e-mail me with your thoughts at s.carney@elsevier.com
The Ubiquitin Proteasome System (UPS) is the main route through which proteins are degraded in the cell and of great therapeutic interest due to its implication in a variety of pathologies, such as cancer, neurodegeneration and autoimmune disease. The recent success of Velcade (bortezomib, Takeda-Millenium and Johnson&Johnson), the first drug to target the UPS, has established the UPS as a druggable target and has made this one of the most exciting areas of drug discovery.
In this podcast interview with Drug Discovery Today, Nobel Prize winner Professor Aaron Ciechanover will talk about his career, his Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the UPS, and the extraordinary opportunities and challenges for drug discovery in this area.
ITI Life Sciences is an organization dedicated to generating business opportunities in the life sciences sector and the sponsor of this podcast. ITI Life Sciences commissions cutting-edge R&D programmes in Scotland and abroad and has recently committed £9.3 million ($15m) towards an international collaboration to develop enabling technologies and generate additional drug-like molecules against targets within the UPS.
The Critical Path Initiative is the US Food and Drug Administration’s national strategy for modernising the sciences through which FDA-regulated products are developed, evaluated, manufactured, and used. The Initiative was launched in March 2004 to address the steep decline in the number of innovative medical products submitted for approval, despite the enormous breakthroughs being made in biomedical science. Although initially conceived as a drive to apply discoveries in emerging areas of science and technology to medical product development, the Initiative has since expanded its scope to include all FDA-regulated products.
Related Biographies:
Robert M. Califf, MD
Dr. Califf graduated from Duke University, in 1973 and from Duke University Medical School in 1978. He performed his internship and residency at the University of California at San Francisco and his fellowship in cardiology at Duke University. He is board-certified in internal medicine (1984) and cardiology (1986) and is a Master of the American College of Cardiology (2006).
He is currently Vice Chancellor for Clinical Research, Director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute (DTMI), and Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. For 10 years he was the founding Director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), the premier academic research organization in the world. He is the editor-in-chief of Elsevier’s American Heart Journal, the oldest cardiovascular specialty journal. He has been author or coauthor of more than 900 peer-reviewed journal articles and a contributing editor for theheart.org, an online information resource for academic and practicing cardiologists. He was recently acknowledged as one of the 10 most cited authors in the field of medicine by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
Dr. Califf led the DCRI for many of the best-known clinical trials in cardiovascular disease. With an annual budget of over $100 million, the DCRI has more than 1000 employees and collaborates extensively with government agencies, the medical-products industry, and academic partners around the globe in all therapeutic areas. In cooperation with his colleagues from the Duke Databank for Cardiovascular Disease, Dr. Califf has written extensively about the clinical and economic outcomes of chronic heart disease. He is considered an international leader in the fields of health outcomes, quality of care, and medical economics.
Dr. Califf’s role as Director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute, which is funded in part by an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), includes service as co-chairman of the Principal Investigators Steering Committee of the CTSA. Dr. Califf has served on the Cardiorenal Advisory Panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Pharmaceutical Roundtable of the Institute of Medicine (IOM). He served on the IOM committees that recommended Medicare coverage of clinical trials as well as the removal of ephedra from the market and on the IOM’s Committee on Identifying and Preventing Medication Errors. He is currently a member of the IOM Forum in Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation and a subcommittee of the Science Board of the FDA. He was the founding director of the coordinating center for the Centers for Education & Research on TherapeuticsÔ (CERTs), a public/private partnership among the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the FDA, academia, the medical-products industry, and consumer groups. This partnership focuses on research and education that will advance the best use of medical products. He is now the co-chairman of the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), a public private partnership focused on improving the clinical trials system.
Judith M. Kramer, MD, MS
Dr. Kramer is Executive Director, Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), and Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center. She is also co-investigator in the Duke Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) focused on cardiovascular disease and member of FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee. Over her career, Dr. Kramer has practiced clinical pharmacy, general internal medicine in a rural community, and clinical research, both pre-approval and post-approval. Her clinical research experience has included working in the pharmaceutical industry (Burroughs Wellcome Co-VP Medical/ GlaxoWellcome-International Director, Cardiovascular/Critical Care) and Duke Clinical Research Institute (9 years as Chief Medical Officer and previous Principal Investigator, Duke CERTs). From 1999-2001, Dr. Kramer was Founding Director, Masters Program in Clinical Research at Campbell University in NC. Dr. Kramer’s research interests include finding safe and effective cardiovascular therapies, assuring persistent use of life-saving medications, and evaluating new methods to study post-marketing safety of drugs and devices
Rachel E. Behrman Rachel E. Behrman is the Associate Commissioner for Clinical Programs and Director of the Office of Critical Path Programs, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In that capacity, she is responsible for developing, coordinating, and implementing policy and scientific programs aimed at innovating development and regulation of FDA-regulated products. Dr. Behrman joined the FDA in 1989 and has held a number of positions in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, including medical reviewer and team leader in the Division of Antiviral Drug Products and deputy director of the Office of Medical Policy. Dr. Behrman is a board certified internist and infectious disease subspecialist and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. She received her A.B in mathematics from Washington University, her M.D. from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and her M.P.H. from The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with her husband and their four children.
Dr. Brent Vose
Brent Vose is Vice President and Head of Oncology & Infection Therapy Area, R&D, AstraZeneca. Dr. Vose graduated in Pharmacy in 1970 from Nottingham University and later, in 1973, was awarded a PhD in Immunology. His post-doctoral career was largely at the Paterson Cancer Research Laboratories at the world-renowned Christie Hospital in Manchester. Later, he worked as a visiting scientist at both the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA.
In 1982, Dr. Vose joined AstraZeneca (then known as ICI research), becoming Head of Immunology and Arthritis Research some seven years later. He moved to the Development Function as International Product Development Manager in 1991. In this post he was responsible for the development strategy, life cycle planning and delivery of all cancer products. While in this position, he chaired the teams overseeing the rapid development of Crestor.
He took up his current position in 1999 and now leads a team with responsibility for the strategy of Cancer and Infection and the progression of the early portfolio.
Professor David Bylund
Professor David Bylund is one of the most influential scientists working today in the field of the development of potential novel antidepressant agents and is especially interested in the field of adolescent depression. Professor Bylund’s laboratory is involved in the characterization of the alpha-2 adrenergic receptor subtypes and, particularly, in the process of norepinephrine-induced receptor down-regulation. The distribution and development of the adrenergic receptor subtypes in brain, and their relationship to mental disorders, is another particular focus of his work. Professor Bylund has held many prestigious positions in august scientific societies, including the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology to name but two. Professor Bylund has also been the Editor of Pharmacological Reviews and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and is a co-editor of xPharm, a comprehensive, web-based database.
Nate Cosper, Caliper Life Sciences
Dr. Cosper received his MBA and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Georgia, where his research was focused on active site structure-function relationships for metalloenzymes. Dr. Cosper worked in a start up drug discovery company, then as an industry consultant for Frost & Sullivan covering life sciences and clinical diagnostics. At Caliper Life Sciences, his group actively monitors emerging scientific and technological trends, with an aim towards developing instrumentation and service offerings that accelerate life sciences research.
Dr. Christopher Lipinski
Dr. Christopher Lipinski has been one of the most influential scientists in the Pharmaceutical industry in recent history. He held the post of Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Pfizer Global R&D from June 2002. He now acts as a Scientific Advisor to Melior Discovery, a company specializing in drug repurposing. He has held many positions in august scientific societies including membership of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences (AAPS), and the Society of Biomolecular Sciences (SBS) to name but a few. He is on the Editorial board of a number of journals, not least Drug Discovery Today. Perhaps most famous as the developer of the "rule of five" – a series of rules established to screen compounds for the likelihood that they will have acceptable oral absorption characteristics. Chris has received many honours, most notably the 2006 Society for Biomolecular Sciences Achievement Award winner and the 2005 E. B. Hershberg Award for Important Discoveries in Medicinally Active Substances from the ACS.
About the Dr. Stephen Minger Podcast
This podcast features Dr. Stephen Minger, one of the World’s leading lights in Stem Cell biology. Dr. Minger has been in the news recently as he has received one of only two licenses awarded in the UK allowing his team to produce hybrid embryos. Dr. Minger received a BA in Psychology and a PhD in Pathology (Neurosciences) from the University of Minnesota. While a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Fred Gage, Dr. Minger began his research in neural stem cell biology. More recently, Dr. Minger and his research group has investigated a wide range of somatic stem cell populations, as well as mouse and human embryonic stem (hES) cells. In 2002, with Dr Susan Pickering and Professor Peter Braude, he was awarded one of the first two licenses granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for the derivation of human ES cells. The Minger group generated the first hES cell line in the UK and was one of the first groups to deposit such a line into the UK Stem Cell Bank.
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Drug Discovery Today Podcasts
Robert M. Califf, MD
Judith M. Kramer, MD, MS
Rachel E. Behrman