IBC's Drug Discovery Technology - Europe 2001. 23-26 April 2001, Stuttgart, Germany

Specific sectors within the pharmaceutical industry are rapidly changing in response to technological advances. Genomics, high-throughput automated chemistry, high-throughput screening (HTS), ADME/Tox screening and informatics, provide new opportunities, but also create new bottlenecks. In addition, the selection and validation of biological targets, the proper design of compound libraries, data and knowledge management, and as the last and crucial step, the proof of therapeutic relevance by clinical trials, generates an enormous financial load on biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. In the future, drug development costs might be reduced due to an ongoing pressure for shorter development cycles of new drugs. IBC's Drug Discovery Technology Europe 2001 conference addressed many aspects relevant to drug discovery technologies, and, along with its US partner conference, provides an annual meeting place for researchers and company executives to interact and exchange ideas.     

Digestive disease week 2001. American association for the study of liver diseases. 19-23 May 2001, Atlanta, GA, USA

All aspects of hepatology were represented at this year's meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), although the meeting was dominated by a proliferation of information in the arena of viral hepatitis. In an international multicenter study of over 1000 treatment-naive patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, sustained virological response was found in 56% of patients who received PEGylated interferon (IFN) alpha-2a (Pegasys; F Hoffmann-La Roche) in combination with ribavirin (Virazole; ICN Pharmaceuticals), versus 45% in patients who received IFN alpha-2b and ribavirin therapy, and 30% of patients who received PEG. This is a significant improvement on currently licensed therapy and will define practice patterns for the next decade. In other areas, novel therapies such as silymarin for cholestatic liver disease, L-dT (Novirio Pharmaceuticals Inc), herbal therapy, combination therapies including amantadine and mycophenolate mofetil (Roche Holding) for viral hepatitis, and long-acting octreotide (Sandostatin LAR Depot; Novartis) for portal hypertension, were presented. This review represents the best of AASLD at DDW 2001.     

PDE4 inhibitors 2001. Patent and literature activity 2000 - September 2001

Patenting activity relating to PDE4 inhibitors remains at a sustained level, with a slight upward trend in the number of published applications. A total of 59 applications were published in 2000 and current trends suggest approximately 63 will be published in 2001. The most active companies, each accounting for 13 applications within this period are the two companies, GlaxoSmithKline and Byk Gulden, with compounds in advanced Phase III studies. Another 18 companies and institutions have published their first claims in this field during this period, most notably ICOS, with 8 applications published in June 2001. With regulatory filings for both cilomilast and roflumilast likely to be filed in 2002, interest in this area is likely to increase during the next few years.     

Infectious disease 2001: drug resistance, new drugs.

The 41st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) was held in Chicago on 16-19 December 2001, rescheduled following the tragic events of 11th September. Nonetheless, it attracted thousands of delegates from industry and academia and covered, in over 2200 oral and poster presentations, topics ranging from bioterrorism, microbial pathogenesis and emerging pathogens, to infection control, vaccines, antibiotic resistance and new antimicrobial agents and treatment strategies. Summarized here are highlights on bacterial and fungal drug resistance and on new agents in preclinical and clinical development.     

Cancer research 2001: drug resistance, new targets and drug combinations.

The development of new anticancer drugs and the identification of novel targets represent major focus areas for pharmaceutical and biotech companies, universities and research institutes worldwide. The 92nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) provided a glimpse of the latest developments in the cancer field. We highlight here presentations on resistance mechanisms (efflux, target modulation), new targets and drugs in development (topoisomerase, angiogenesis, cell cycle inhibitors) and new molecular technologies. The emergence of technologies for concurrently screening for expression of thousands of genes, has provided a new approach for the identification of molecular targets and mechanisms of both action and resistance of new compounds. The importance of inhibiting multiple targets simultaneously was brought up in several presentations.     

Cannabinoids - from plant to patient. 5 April 2001, London, UK

The active constituents of cannabis (predominantly cannabinoids and possibly flavonoids) are more effective than a single cannabinoid in reducing muscle spasticity in a multiple sclerosis animal model. Possible interactions include both pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic effects. Synthetic cannabinoids with agonist or antagonist/inverse agonist effects are available with high affinity for cannabinoids receptors. Pharmaceutical products that block their uptake and metabolism may enhance the endocannabinoid system. Government- and charity-funded clinical trials of cannabis are proceeding in pain, both acute (MRC multicenter trial) and chronic, and multiple sclerosis (MRC and Multiple Sclerosis Society multicenter trials). The design of these trials should enable evidence to be presented to regulatory bodies documenting the medicinal uses of standardized cannabis plant material.