TUESDAY, APRIL 5

7:30 am Registration and Morning Coffee

Collaborative Networks

8:50 Chairperson’s Opening Remarks

Phillips Kuhl, President, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

9:00 Establishing Collaborative Networks to Develop Broad Spectrum Antibacterial Agents with Encapsulated IP

Lance Stewart, CEO, BioStructures, Emerald BioStructures

Our Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (www.ssgcid.org) is funded by NIAID and produces 100’s of X-ray crystalstructures of infectious disease protein targets, establishing a “blueprint for structure guided drug design”. We have established a network of investigators and resources to pursue cost effective collaborative discovery or new small molecule antibiotic candidates with broad spectrum activity. Importantly, we are taking innovative tech transfer measures to ensure co-invented IP protection to ensure monetization life after lead discovery.

Sponsored by
9:30 SCYNEXIS’ Global Health Technologies & Capabilities to Encourage the Development of ND Therapeutics

Yves Ribeill, Ph.D., President and CEO, SCYNEXIS, Inc.

SCYNEXIS, Inc. delivers innovative drug discovery and development solutions to our pharmaceutical and global health partners. Our success is demonstrated by the eleven pre-clinical and clinical drug candidates that we have delivered to our partners over the last five years. SCYNEXIS is now offering its established expertise and technologies to life science organizations who are interested in participating in an effort to bring the best technology forward to address global health challenges.

10:00 Networking Coffee Break, Poster and Exhibit Viewing

10:40 Open Source for Neglected Diseases: Challenges and Opportunities

Hassan Masum, Ph.D., Results for Development Institute

Open source approaches have had remarkable success in creating software and enabling mass collaboration. Results for Development is undertaking a landscaping project to better understand open source approaches for research and development for neglected diseases, and their potential to lower costs and R&D time frames, increase collaboration, and build a knowledge commons. This presentation will address several questions:
- Why is open source and collaborative innovation important?
- What does "open source" really mean, and how has it been used for neglected diseases?
- What challenges do we face in applying open source methods?
- What opportunities can we co-create for using open source methods?

11:10 Collaborative Drug Discovery: A Platform for Transforming Neglected Disease R&D and Beyond

Sean Ekins, Ph.D., Collaborations Director, Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.

Collaborative drug discovery (CDD) is an evolving paradigm for biomedical research and can be facilitated by computational tools. We have developed a web-based software that handles a broad array of data types, enabling archiving and selective sharing. This has enabled us to collect small molecule datasets on TB and malaria (from pharmas and academics) and use it to provide new insights into their molecular properties. These datasets have in turn enabled computational models for TB that demonstrate 4-10 fold enrichment in finding active compounds. We present new approaches to facilitating collaborations, collecting and mining data to prioritize new molecules for testing against neglected diseases.

11:40 Breaking IP Barriers to Accelerate Drug R&D: The Pool for Open Innovation against Neglected Tropical Diseases

Don Joseph, COO, BIO Ventures for Global Health

The pool for open innovation against Neglected Tropical Diseases motivates innovative and efficient drug discovery and development by opening access to intellectual property or know-how in neglected tropical disease research.

12:10 pm Luncheon Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Lunch on Your Own

Programs and Strategies

1:40 Chairperson’s Opening Remarks

1:45 Update on Collaborative Efforts Supported by Innovative Medicines Initiative for Data Sharing and Joint Research

Ann Martin, Ph.D., Principal Scientific Manager, Knowledge Management, Innovative Medicines Initiative

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a large-scale public-private partnership between the European Union and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). IMI runs a 2 billion euro research program aiming to speed up the discovery and development of safer and more effective drugs for patients, and to reinvigorate the biopharmaceutical sector in Europe. IMI supports research projects in the areas of drug safety and efficacy, knowledge management and education and training.  The main goal of this unique and innovative funding scheme is to improve tools and technologies (such as biomarkers, imaging techniques, knowledge management platforms) that will enable the faster and more efficient development of safer and better drugs for patients. The research consortia participating in IMI projects include small- and medium-sized enterprises, universities and other research organizations, hospitals, patient organizations, public authorities and large pharmaceutical companies.  What are the common challenges across the various IMI-supported projects and benefits of collaborative research?  What is the range of projects and some examples of using technology to facilitate information sharing?

2:15 Grants4targets: A Novel Crowd Sourcing Approach and Key Success Factors for Industrial-Academic Collaborations

Monika Lessl, Ph.D., Director, Alliance Management Global Drug Discovery, Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals

As collaborations between industry and academia become more and more important, the question regarding novel models and success factors about how to manage collaborations arises. Insights into the novel crowd sourcing initiative, Grants4targets (www.grants4targets.com), will be presented. Experiences and first data from our novel crowd sourcing initiative will be discussed, as will a novel model that we have developed (RESOLVE Model) summarizing success factors for industry- academic collaborations.

2:45 Open Innovation and Healthcare Results: The NASA Experience with Open Innovation Pilots

Jeffrey Davis, Ph.D., Director, Space Life Sciences, NASA - Johnson Space Center

Over the past year, NASA has conducted pilot projects using open innovation platforms to solve human health and performance problems for long duration space flight. The results of this crowd-sourcing experiment have been outstanding. NASA has conducted 14 pilot projects with three open innovation providers: InnoCentive, Yet2.com and TopCoder. The pilots were run to assess the ability of crowd-sourcing to solve NASA human health and performance problems. The results were outstanding, in terms of technical content, speed, and costs.

3:15 Networking Refreshment Break, Poster and Exhibit Viewing

3:45 The Gene Wiki: Harnessing Community Intelligence to Synthesize Knowledge about Human Genes

Benjamin Good, Ph.D., Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation

From the automated analysis of gene lists produced by high-throughput experiments to the investigation of individual genes, recorded knowledge of gene function is vital for forming and testing new biological hypotheses.  While new scientific articles are published every minute, the synthesis of the knowledge distributed throughout these articles into coherent, useful forms is a second step that often lags far behind.  The Gene Wiki is a collection of Wikipedia articles created to enable the broad community to participate in the process of assembling knowledge of human gene function.  The initial creation, ongoing growth and current applications of the Gene Wiki will be discussed.

Sponsored by
4:15 Collaborative Innovation is Key to Driving Higher Financial Returns for Biopharma

Stuart Henderson, Partner, IBM Global Business Services

We will present the findings from a new study that reveals companies which succeed at collaborative innovation and partnering with biopharmaceutical firms and academia deliver the best financial returns. This verifies a new trend where increasingly life science companies must collaborate in order to drive innovation.

4:45 Focused Breakout Discussions

Topic 1: Challenges and Opportunities for Collaboration in Neglected Diseases
Hassan Masum, Ph.D., Results for Development Institute

Topic 2: Technologies to Facilitate Information Sharing and Collaboration
Sean Ekins, Ph.D., Collaborations Director, Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.

Topic 3: Open Innovation and Crowd-Souring as Collaboration Strategies
Monika Lessl, Ph.D., Director, Alliance Management Global Drug Discovery, Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals
 
Topic 4: Biomarkers as Pre-competitive Space for Collaboration
William Mattes, Ph.D., Senior Director, COPD Biomarkers Consortium

Topic 5: Lessons for Public-Private Collaborations
Moderator:  To be Announced

Topic 6:  Ideas for Sharing and Protecting Intellectual Property in Consortia
Moderator:  To be Announced

6:00 End of Day