3:30-4:00  Drug Delivery to the Inner Ear
Dr. Stephen McCormack, President and Chief Executive Officer, NeuroSystec Corp.
NeuroSystec Corporation is a new combination therapy company that is developing unique, advanced products which deliver neuroactive compounds using pumps and formulation technologies to treat hearing disorders. By applying the advances in delivery systems to recently developed neuroactive compounds, we are joining two areas of scientific discovery in order to bring relief to people suffering from previously untreatable conditions. Tinnitus, a condition associated with hearing loss and with no method of treatment, is our first target indication. According to a CDC report 50 million Americans suffer from tinnitus and 2 million are disabled by the disease. This presentation will discuss the future of nanosystems for drug delivery and present an examination of clinical targets for inner ear disorders. 

4:00-4:30 Polymerized Liposomal Nanoparticles (PLNs): New, Targetable Delivery Vehicles for Anti-Inflammatory, Vaccine and Cancer Chemotherapeutic Applications
Dr. Jon O. Nagy, Vice President and Director of Medicinal Chemistry, NanoMed Technologies, LLC
NanoMed has developed a synthetic, non-viral nanoparticle technology embodying 1) a unique nanoparticle design platform, and 2) a customizable drug delivery system. The Polymerized Liposomal Nanoparticle (PLN) technology utilizes nanoparticles created using the self-assembling ability of a unique class of diacetylenic lipids that can be polymerized into stable, bimolecular membrane structures capable of delivering a drug payload. The PLN technology lends itself especially well to the display of multiple functionalities. These particles are comprised of individual lipid monomers part of which are functionalized for the purpose of targeting, and may include additional moieties to control other physical properties such as surface charge, polarity, and fluidity. Different functionalized lipids can be rapidly mixed and matched in an infinite number of combinations and relative concentrations to create tailor-made particles with desirable targeting and circulation properties. The nanoparticles are non-immunogenic, display no acute toxicity and can be highly concentrated. We are able to modulate the particle intracellular degradation and excretion rates by controlling the degree of polymerization.

4:30-5:00 The Nanomechanics of Protiveris’s Cantilever Arrays and Biosensor System
Dr. Gregory Kellogg, CTO, R&D, Protiveris Inc.
Nanomechanical cantilevers are extremely sensitive transducers of chemical and biological signals into mechanical motion. Protiveris’s VeriScan(tm) 3000 Biosensor System is the first nanomechanical cantilever reader capable of tracking the movement of an array of cantilevers in multiple assays wells. It can detect the motion of up to 64 cantilevers individually and simultaneously with resolutions of less than 1 nanometer of bending. Significantly, using optical detection techniques, the VeriScan 3000 Biosensor System can measure both stress related and mass related cantilever deflections. This technology offers real-time detection of biomolecular binding events, in a multiplex, label free format and at lower detection limits than existing techniques.

5:00 Close of Day One