The last major fragment event of this year is over, but it ends on a high note: FBLD 2010 has remained true to its predecessors in bringing together a great group of fragment enthusiasts in a Gordon-Conference-like environment. With 30 talks and even more posters I won’t attempt to be comprehensive or even representative, but will instead just pick out a few themes. Those of you who were there, please chime in with your own observations.
One of the themes was the shape of chemical space, and what makes a good binder. Jean-Louis Reymond, who has been systematically enumerating all stable molecules containing carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and a few other atoms, has already published up to 13 heavy atoms but is now expanding his analysis to molecules containing up to 17. The issue of whether more attention should be given to three-dimensional fragments was discussed, with Ken Brameld reporting that fragments in crystal structures at Roche and the protein data bank contain fewer “flat” compounds than does the ZINC database of commercial molecules. However, analyzing 150,000 molecules with MW < 300 that had been screened in 40-100 high-throughput screens at Roche did not show any shape differences between the 50,000 molecules that showed up in at least one screen and those that didn’t. Interestingly, this ratio also came up in a talk by Tony Giannetti of Genentech, who said that across 13 screens 36% of their fragments hit at least one protein, while the rest didn’t hit any. Vernalis has found similar results; is there any way to enrich for the productive binders?
While FBLD 2009 had a strong computational theme, a major thrust of this conference was using biophysics to detect and confirm fragment binding. Tony discussed best-practices in SPR, and noted that since small molecules are “brighter” in NMR assays than proteins it is possible to find even very tiny fragments, including a 6 heavy-atom compound with a Kd of 600 micromolar. Tony also described the use of SPR for weeding out badly behaved compounds. Spookily, he noted that promiscuity is a function of compound, protein, and buffer, so it is not possible to weed out bad actors in a library before screening: one compound that was promiscuous against 8 targets bound legitimately and gave a crystal structure with a ninth. Adam Renslo of the University of California San Francisco described how easy it is to be misled by such phenomena. Glyn Williams described how Astex uses biophysical techniques to detect problem compounds, and noted that oxidizers can be particularly insidious – a trend that will likely continue as people explore novel heterocycles.
Glyn also presented a fascinating if slightly depressing discussion of ligand efficiency. As many have found, it can be challenging to maintain ligand efficiency during the course of fragment optimization. Yet even this goal is too modest. A fragment pays about 4.2 kcal/mol in binding energy when it binds to a protein due to loss of rotational and translational entropy; since this enropy cost is only paid once, atoms added to this molecule do not have this liability . Thus, merely maintaining ligand efficiency means that the atoms being added are binding less efficiently. This point was also emphasized by Colin Groom of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.
Membrane proteins are increasingly being targeted by fragment-based methods, as recently discussed on this site, and both Gregg Siegal of ZoBio and Rebecca Rich of the University of Utah presented progress against GPCRs.
There was general agreement that many approaches can find fragments, and that using several orthogonal methods is a good way to separate the true binders from the chaff, but a continuing challenge is what to do next. The last two sessions were devoted to chemical follow-up strategies and success stories. Some of these have been at least partially covered on Practical Fragments (for example here, here, and here) but there were a number of unpublished examples too – we’ll try to discuss these individually as they emerge.
If you missed this or the previous two conferences you’ll have another chance in 2012, when the meeting will be held in my fair city of San Francisco. And if you can’t wait that long, there are at least two fragment conferences scheduled for next year – details to come shortly.
Showing posts with label 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2010. Show all posts
14 October 2010
31 August 2010
Last reminder: Fragment-based Lead Discovery 2010
Today is the last day to submit a poster abstract for FBLD 2010, the first major fragment event on the east coast of the US (in Philadelphia, PA, from October 10-13). Registration will remain open for up to 250 attendees (with 177 coming so far) at $700 for industrial attendees and $350 for academic attendees. The hotel discount expires Sept 20, so book your room ASAP before they fill up.
I think this is the last fragment event this year, but if you know of anything else (or next year) please pass it on or leave a comment.
I think this is the last fragment event this year, but if you know of anything else (or next year) please pass it on or leave a comment.
19 May 2010
Updated again: Fragment-based conferences in 2010
The year is not even half over, but most of the fragment events are behind us (see summaries here, here, and here). You still have a couple more opportunities for some great conferences.
June 6-9: The 32nd National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dave Rees is organizing a session on fragments on June 9. Looks like a great lineup, with top speakers from Astex, Plexxikon, Novartis, Abbott, and UC Berkeley.
October 10-13: Fragment-based Lead Discovery 2010 is the first major fragment event on the east coast of the US (in Philadelphia, PA). There are lots of excellent speakers, and the conference is still accepting abstracts for talks until May 31. Early bird-registration also ends that day. If you haven’t made it to any other fragment events this year, don’t miss FBLD 2010!
Know of anything else? Organizing a fragment event? Let us know and we’ll get the word out.
June 6-9: The 32nd National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dave Rees is organizing a session on fragments on June 9. Looks like a great lineup, with top speakers from Astex, Plexxikon, Novartis, Abbott, and UC Berkeley.
October 10-13: Fragment-based Lead Discovery 2010 is the first major fragment event on the east coast of the US (in Philadelphia, PA). There are lots of excellent speakers, and the conference is still accepting abstracts for talks until May 31. Early bird-registration also ends that day. If you haven’t made it to any other fragment events this year, don’t miss FBLD 2010!
Know of anything else? Organizing a fragment event? Let us know and we’ll get the word out.
30 April 2010
Fifth Annual Fragment-Based Drug Discovery
The first of two conferences in 2010 exclusively devoted to fragment-based drug discovery concluded in San Diego this week, and I thought I’d jot down some observations while my memories are still fresh.
The pre-conference short courses were quite successful (and I’m hopefully only slightly biased by the fact that Teddy and I were both instructors). Participants included folks with considerable experience in fragments, which allowed good discussion.
One talk from the conference that stands out in my mind was by Sandy Farmer of Boehringer Ingelheim. BI is a relative late-comer to fragment-based methods, really only starting in late 2004. Sandy described how fragment efforts are run in parallel with HTS. They use an intentionally modest fragment library of 2000 diverse compounds; increasing the size of this library tended to overwhelm downstream efforts. Fragments are confirmed using multiple assays, including SPR and size-exclusion chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, with crystallography playing a pivotal role in determining which fragments to advance. Part of the challenge at BI has been getting chemists to accept FBS, or “faith-based synthesis,” particularly where initial fragments have low affinities. A focus on ligand efficiency helps, as do organizational strategies such as establishing a dedicated group of chemists focused on fragment projects.
Often at conferences you hear about success stories, but sometimes the continuing challenges are more instructive, as when Ravi Kurumbail at Pfizer discussed his efforts to discover drug-like inhibitors of the serine protease Factor XIa. One of the sobering findings was that, although a functional assay of 2500 fragments yielded a 6.5% hit rate, adding 0.01% detergent eliminated activity and revealed most ‘hits’ as false positives. Even one crystallographically characterized fragment with an apparent IC50 of 75 micromolar turned out to be an artifact after subsequent analysis – a reminder to always be vigilant at higher concentrations.
But back to success stories: Daniel Wyss gave an update on the BACE program from Merck (legacy Schering-Plough, which has run more than 30 fragment screens on various targets). We highlighted a couple publications resulting from this effort earlier this year. It turns out there are now three molecules from this program in early clinical trials – a clear indication of the importance of this target and the utility of fragment screening.
Finally, Rick Artis, formerly of Plexxikon (now Elan) gave an update on the PLX4032 Raf kinase program. This project demonstrates the potential for fragment-based efforts to move quickly: it was started in February 2005, the clinical candidate was identified in January 2006, the IND was filed in September, and the first patient was dosed in November of that year. The molecule has continued to move at warp speed through the clinic: it is now partnered with Roche in Phase III testing for metastatic melanoma, and was recently profiled in the New York Times. This lengthy but excellent article is well worth reading for a bit of perspective when life in the lab gets you down.
These are just a few of many nice talks and breakout discussions. I know that at least some readers of this blog were there – what were your impressions?
The pre-conference short courses were quite successful (and I’m hopefully only slightly biased by the fact that Teddy and I were both instructors). Participants included folks with considerable experience in fragments, which allowed good discussion.
One talk from the conference that stands out in my mind was by Sandy Farmer of Boehringer Ingelheim. BI is a relative late-comer to fragment-based methods, really only starting in late 2004. Sandy described how fragment efforts are run in parallel with HTS. They use an intentionally modest fragment library of 2000 diverse compounds; increasing the size of this library tended to overwhelm downstream efforts. Fragments are confirmed using multiple assays, including SPR and size-exclusion chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, with crystallography playing a pivotal role in determining which fragments to advance. Part of the challenge at BI has been getting chemists to accept FBS, or “faith-based synthesis,” particularly where initial fragments have low affinities. A focus on ligand efficiency helps, as do organizational strategies such as establishing a dedicated group of chemists focused on fragment projects.
Often at conferences you hear about success stories, but sometimes the continuing challenges are more instructive, as when Ravi Kurumbail at Pfizer discussed his efforts to discover drug-like inhibitors of the serine protease Factor XIa. One of the sobering findings was that, although a functional assay of 2500 fragments yielded a 6.5% hit rate, adding 0.01% detergent eliminated activity and revealed most ‘hits’ as false positives. Even one crystallographically characterized fragment with an apparent IC50 of 75 micromolar turned out to be an artifact after subsequent analysis – a reminder to always be vigilant at higher concentrations.
But back to success stories: Daniel Wyss gave an update on the BACE program from Merck (legacy Schering-Plough, which has run more than 30 fragment screens on various targets). We highlighted a couple publications resulting from this effort earlier this year. It turns out there are now three molecules from this program in early clinical trials – a clear indication of the importance of this target and the utility of fragment screening.
Finally, Rick Artis, formerly of Plexxikon (now Elan) gave an update on the PLX4032 Raf kinase program. This project demonstrates the potential for fragment-based efforts to move quickly: it was started in February 2005, the clinical candidate was identified in January 2006, the IND was filed in September, and the first patient was dosed in November of that year. The molecule has continued to move at warp speed through the clinic: it is now partnered with Roche in Phase III testing for metastatic melanoma, and was recently profiled in the New York Times. This lengthy but excellent article is well worth reading for a bit of perspective when life in the lab gets you down.
These are just a few of many nice talks and breakout discussions. I know that at least some readers of this blog were there – what were your impressions?
26 March 2010
ACS Spring Meeting 2010
The spring national meeting of the American Chemical Society has just concluded in (uncharacteristically sunny) San Francisco. The main fragment event was a full day session organized by Rachelle Bienstock of the NIH. The theme was “Fragment based drug discovery: success stories due to novel computational methods applications.” Rachelle is planning on getting some of the speakers to write chapters for a book, so I won’t do more than give a very brief overview here.
The session was very multinational, with speakers from France, Germany, Russia, and the UK, in addition to the US, and a good mix of companies and academics. On the computational corporate side John MacCuish from Mesa Analytics described the molecular shape fingerprints approach, Carsten Detering of BioSolveIT provided several examples of applying his company’s methods for fragment linking and scaffold hopping, and Francois Delfaud of MEDIT described mining the pdb for protein-fragment interactions and applying this to Eg5 inhibitors. On the computational academic side, Tobias Lippert of the Center for Bioinformatics in Hamburg discussed the Qsearch program, Vladimer Poroikov of the Institute of Biomedical Chemistry in Moscow discussed PASS, which relies on a large training set to predict actives and inactives, and Dima Kozakov of Boston University presented the FTMap approach for predicting fragment-binding pockets in protein-protein interactions.
Moving away from the purely computational, Yongjin Xu of Novartis described the application of virtual fragment screening to identify p38 and BRaf inhibitors, Vicki Nienaber of Zenobia described iterative fragment screening to identify potent and selective LRRK2 inhibitors, and I presented Carmot’s Chemotype Evolution approach. Finally, GPCRs appear to be increasingly amenable to FBLD; Richard Law of Evotec presented a number of applications of computational methods to various programs including histamine receptors, while Miles Congreve of Heptares presented their StaR Technology for generating stabilized GPCRs suitable for SPR, NMR, and crystallography and discussed applications to the adenosine A2A receptor and the beta-1 adrenoreceptor. In the later case, the researchers were able to obtain 9 co-crystal structures and found that agonists and antagonists bound somewhat differently.
There were also a few other relevant posters and talks throughout the conference. For example, I learned that Locus Pharmaceuticals has transformed itself into Ansaris; Fouzia Machrouhi presented a poster on developing nanomolar inhibitors of the protein kinase AMPK.
Finally, Andrew Woodhead presented an update on Astex’s CDK2 program. One of the earliest posts on Practical Fragments described Astex’s fragment-based discovery of AT7519, which is in clinical trials for cancer. However, with an oral bioavailability of less than 1%, this compound is administered intravenously. Extensive medicinal chemistry ultimately revealed that a relatively minor change – capping the secondary amine with a methyl sulfonamide – led to a molecule with dramatically improved oral bioavailabilty. This molecule, AT9311, also retains good activity in mouse xenograft models. This is a useful reminder that fragment-based methods are not a replacement for solid (and inevitably subsequent) medicinal chemistry.
The session was very multinational, with speakers from France, Germany, Russia, and the UK, in addition to the US, and a good mix of companies and academics. On the computational corporate side John MacCuish from Mesa Analytics described the molecular shape fingerprints approach, Carsten Detering of BioSolveIT provided several examples of applying his company’s methods for fragment linking and scaffold hopping, and Francois Delfaud of MEDIT described mining the pdb for protein-fragment interactions and applying this to Eg5 inhibitors. On the computational academic side, Tobias Lippert of the Center for Bioinformatics in Hamburg discussed the Qsearch program, Vladimer Poroikov of the Institute of Biomedical Chemistry in Moscow discussed PASS, which relies on a large training set to predict actives and inactives, and Dima Kozakov of Boston University presented the FTMap approach for predicting fragment-binding pockets in protein-protein interactions.
Moving away from the purely computational, Yongjin Xu of Novartis described the application of virtual fragment screening to identify p38 and BRaf inhibitors, Vicki Nienaber of Zenobia described iterative fragment screening to identify potent and selective LRRK2 inhibitors, and I presented Carmot’s Chemotype Evolution approach. Finally, GPCRs appear to be increasingly amenable to FBLD; Richard Law of Evotec presented a number of applications of computational methods to various programs including histamine receptors, while Miles Congreve of Heptares presented their StaR Technology for generating stabilized GPCRs suitable for SPR, NMR, and crystallography and discussed applications to the adenosine A2A receptor and the beta-1 adrenoreceptor. In the later case, the researchers were able to obtain 9 co-crystal structures and found that agonists and antagonists bound somewhat differently.
There were also a few other relevant posters and talks throughout the conference. For example, I learned that Locus Pharmaceuticals has transformed itself into Ansaris; Fouzia Machrouhi presented a poster on developing nanomolar inhibitors of the protein kinase AMPK.
Finally, Andrew Woodhead presented an update on Astex’s CDK2 program. One of the earliest posts on Practical Fragments described Astex’s fragment-based discovery of AT7519, which is in clinical trials for cancer. However, with an oral bioavailability of less than 1%, this compound is administered intravenously. Extensive medicinal chemistry ultimately revealed that a relatively minor change – capping the secondary amine with a methyl sulfonamide – led to a molecule with dramatically improved oral bioavailabilty. This molecule, AT9311, also retains good activity in mouse xenograft models. This is a useful reminder that fragment-based methods are not a replacement for solid (and inevitably subsequent) medicinal chemistry.
20 March 2010
Updated: Fragment-based conferences in 2010
The year is already off to a good start, with one fragment event behind us and several more ahead. Here’s an update, starting with a major event next week.
March 21-25: The spring ACS meeting is being held in San Francisco. There will be a full day symposium on March 24, “Fragment Based Drug Design: Novel Approaches and Success Stories,” as well as a number of other relevant talks and posters scattered throughout.
April 20-25: The Keystone Symposium on computer-aided drug design will take place in Whistler, British Columbia. Although not exclusively devoted to fragments, the schedule shows plenty of talks on the topic.
April 27-28: Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Fifth Annual Fragment-Based Drug Discovery will be held in San Diego. Two pre-conference short courses are also devoted to the topic on April 26, and since both Teddy and I will be participating stop by and tell us what you think of the blog!
June 6-9: The 32nd National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dave Rees is organizing a session on fragments on June 9. Looks like a great lineup, with top speakers from Astex, Plexxikon, Novartis, Abbott, and UC Berkeley.
October 10-13: Finally, registration and calls for abstracts have opened for FBLD 2010 in Philadelphia, PA. This is the third in a popular series of conferences that started with FBLD 2008 in San Diego and continued last year in York, UK. An emphasis this year will be on biophysical methods - old and new - for fragment identification and characterization, as well as sessions on libraries, chemical strategies for fragment evolution, and success stories. As far as we know this is the first major fragment event on the east coast of the US, so don't miss it!
Know of anything else? Organizing a fragment event? Let us know and we’ll get the word out.
March 21-25: The spring ACS meeting is being held in San Francisco. There will be a full day symposium on March 24, “Fragment Based Drug Design: Novel Approaches and Success Stories,” as well as a number of other relevant talks and posters scattered throughout.
April 20-25: The Keystone Symposium on computer-aided drug design will take place in Whistler, British Columbia. Although not exclusively devoted to fragments, the schedule shows plenty of talks on the topic.
April 27-28: Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Fifth Annual Fragment-Based Drug Discovery will be held in San Diego. Two pre-conference short courses are also devoted to the topic on April 26, and since both Teddy and I will be participating stop by and tell us what you think of the blog!
June 6-9: The 32nd National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dave Rees is organizing a session on fragments on June 9. Looks like a great lineup, with top speakers from Astex, Plexxikon, Novartis, Abbott, and UC Berkeley.
October 10-13: Finally, registration and calls for abstracts have opened for FBLD 2010 in Philadelphia, PA. This is the third in a popular series of conferences that started with FBLD 2008 in San Diego and continued last year in York, UK. An emphasis this year will be on biophysical methods - old and new - for fragment identification and characterization, as well as sessions on libraries, chemical strategies for fragment evolution, and success stories. As far as we know this is the first major fragment event on the east coast of the US, so don't miss it!
Know of anything else? Organizing a fragment event? Let us know and we’ll get the word out.
06 February 2010
Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference 2010
The first event on our 2010 calendar, the Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference 2010, was held in San Francisco earlier this week. There were fragment talks and a roundtable, as well as a number of vendors selling fragment libraries – we’ve recently noted how rapidly this area has expanded.
Michael Hennig presented a nice overview of the history and development of fragment-screening at F. Hoffmann-La Roche (Basel). Work done there back in the late 1990s relied on NMR and crystallographic screening of a library of 300 fragments, described in the seminal “needle-screening” publication in J. Med. Chem. Today that library has grown to 6000 compounds following a relaxed rule-of-3 (allowing in particular more hydrogen-bond acceptors and higher lipophilicity) and requiring at least one hydrogen bond donor or acceptor and at least one ring. Also, the primary screening technique is now surface-plasmon resonance (SPR), with crystallographic follow-up; the entire collection can be screened on a single Biacore instrument in four weeks.
Hennig shared two case studies, one on BACE-1, the other on chymase. In the second case, a dozen fragments were successfully co-crystallized with the enzyme, and all but one of these bound in the S1 pocket, revealing the importance of this site for binding. In response to a question about how widely FBDD is used at Roche, Hennig said that it is applied to all targets that are technically feasible.
In another talk, James Madden described fragment-based discovery at Evotec. An increasingly stringent series of assays (from high-throughput high-concentration functional assays, through SPR and/or ligand-detected NMR, and finally crystallography and/or protein-detected NMR) helps keep the number of compounds manageable at each step. Madden also presented two cases studies, BACE-1 (clearly a popular target for FBDD, perhaps due to its intractability to many other approaches) and PDE10a.
A fun talk with relevance beyond FBDD was “Examples of X-ray Bloopers”, by Edward Kesicki of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in Seattle, WA. He described several cautionary tales from his own experience. In one case, a chemist provided the structure of the wrong enantiomer to a crystallographer, who duly refined the data, resulting in weeks of confusion and time-consuming follow-up experiments. In two others, crystallographers inadvertently omitted methylene units in fitting electron density. We’ve previously commented on the dangers of taking crystallographic data at face value, and Kesicki also mentioned an effort by Stephen Warren of Gonzaga University to comb through and correct structures in the protein data bank. He has a lot of work to do: of the 1000 structures examined thus far, roughly 20% have problems with the ligands.
Finally, in a panel discussion on “medicinal chemistry drivers,” someone asked about the role of fragment-based drug discovery. Consistent with the idea that fragment approaches are becoming increasingly integrated with other lead-finding activities, Hing Sham of Elan said that he was neither pro-fragment nor anti-fragment – “it’s just another tool in the toolbox.”
Michael Hennig presented a nice overview of the history and development of fragment-screening at F. Hoffmann-La Roche (Basel). Work done there back in the late 1990s relied on NMR and crystallographic screening of a library of 300 fragments, described in the seminal “needle-screening” publication in J. Med. Chem. Today that library has grown to 6000 compounds following a relaxed rule-of-3 (allowing in particular more hydrogen-bond acceptors and higher lipophilicity) and requiring at least one hydrogen bond donor or acceptor and at least one ring. Also, the primary screening technique is now surface-plasmon resonance (SPR), with crystallographic follow-up; the entire collection can be screened on a single Biacore instrument in four weeks.
Hennig shared two case studies, one on BACE-1, the other on chymase. In the second case, a dozen fragments were successfully co-crystallized with the enzyme, and all but one of these bound in the S1 pocket, revealing the importance of this site for binding. In response to a question about how widely FBDD is used at Roche, Hennig said that it is applied to all targets that are technically feasible.
In another talk, James Madden described fragment-based discovery at Evotec. An increasingly stringent series of assays (from high-throughput high-concentration functional assays, through SPR and/or ligand-detected NMR, and finally crystallography and/or protein-detected NMR) helps keep the number of compounds manageable at each step. Madden also presented two cases studies, BACE-1 (clearly a popular target for FBDD, perhaps due to its intractability to many other approaches) and PDE10a.
A fun talk with relevance beyond FBDD was “Examples of X-ray Bloopers”, by Edward Kesicki of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in Seattle, WA. He described several cautionary tales from his own experience. In one case, a chemist provided the structure of the wrong enantiomer to a crystallographer, who duly refined the data, resulting in weeks of confusion and time-consuming follow-up experiments. In two others, crystallographers inadvertently omitted methylene units in fitting electron density. We’ve previously commented on the dangers of taking crystallographic data at face value, and Kesicki also mentioned an effort by Stephen Warren of Gonzaga University to comb through and correct structures in the protein data bank. He has a lot of work to do: of the 1000 structures examined thus far, roughly 20% have problems with the ligands.
Finally, in a panel discussion on “medicinal chemistry drivers,” someone asked about the role of fragment-based drug discovery. Consistent with the idea that fragment approaches are becoming increasingly integrated with other lead-finding activities, Hing Sham of Elan said that he was neither pro-fragment nor anti-fragment – “it’s just another tool in the toolbox.”
21 December 2009
Fragment-based conferences in 2010
There have been some great conferences this past year (see summaries of some of them here and here), and 2010 is shaping up nicely, particularly with the announcement of FBLD 2010 (below).
February 3-5: CHI’s Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference will be held in my beautiful city of San Francisco, with a program on medicinal chemistry that includes a fragment track, and a short course on “Fragment-Inspired Medicinal Chemistry” on February 2.
March 21-25: The spring ACS meeting will also be held in San Francisco. There will be a symposium on “Fragment Based Drug Design: Novel Approaches and Success Stories.”
April 20-25: The Keystone Symposium on computer-aided drug design will take place in Whistler, British Columbia. Although not exclusively devoted to fragments, the schedule shows plenty of talks on the topic.
April 27-28: Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Fifth Annual Fragment-Based Drug Discovery will be held in San Diego. And if you missed the short course in San Francisco, you have another chance on April 26.
June 6-9: The 32nd National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dave Rees is organizing a session on fragments on June 9. Looks like a great lineup, with top speakers from Astex, Plexxikon, Novartis, Abbott, and UC Berkeley.
October 10-13: Finally, standing alone in the second half of the year, Fragment-based Lead Discovery 2010 will be held in Philadelphia, PA. This is the third in a popular series of conferences that started with FBLD 2008 in San Diego and continued this year in York, UK. An emphasis next year will be on biophysical methods - old and new - for fragment identification and characterization, as well as sessions on libraries, chemical strategies for fragment evolution, and success stories. A web site will be available shortly where further details will be posted. We anticipate a call for oral and poster contributions during the Spring of 2010. As far as we know this is the first major fragment event on the east coast of the US, so don't miss it!
Know of anything else? Organizing a fragment event? Let us know and we’ll get the word out.
February 3-5: CHI’s Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference will be held in my beautiful city of San Francisco, with a program on medicinal chemistry that includes a fragment track, and a short course on “Fragment-Inspired Medicinal Chemistry” on February 2.
March 21-25: The spring ACS meeting will also be held in San Francisco. There will be a symposium on “Fragment Based Drug Design: Novel Approaches and Success Stories.”
April 20-25: The Keystone Symposium on computer-aided drug design will take place in Whistler, British Columbia. Although not exclusively devoted to fragments, the schedule shows plenty of talks on the topic.
April 27-28: Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Fifth Annual Fragment-Based Drug Discovery will be held in San Diego. And if you missed the short course in San Francisco, you have another chance on April 26.
June 6-9: The 32nd National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dave Rees is organizing a session on fragments on June 9. Looks like a great lineup, with top speakers from Astex, Plexxikon, Novartis, Abbott, and UC Berkeley.
October 10-13: Finally, standing alone in the second half of the year, Fragment-based Lead Discovery 2010 will be held in Philadelphia, PA. This is the third in a popular series of conferences that started with FBLD 2008 in San Diego and continued this year in York, UK. An emphasis next year will be on biophysical methods - old and new - for fragment identification and characterization, as well as sessions on libraries, chemical strategies for fragment evolution, and success stories. A web site will be available shortly where further details will be posted. We anticipate a call for oral and poster contributions during the Spring of 2010. As far as we know this is the first major fragment event on the east coast of the US, so don't miss it!
Know of anything else? Organizing a fragment event? Let us know and we’ll get the word out.
07 October 2009
Fragment-based events in 2009 and 2010 (and calls for abstracts)
We’re in the last quarter of 2009, and I know of just one more event this year involving fragments:
October 13: The Life Science Regional Technology Symposium will be held in Somerset, NJ, and Dr. Teddy Z. will be one of several excellent speakers.
2010
Next year is starting to take shape nicely, and two events have put out calls for abstracts, so if you have something interesting to present, now’s your chance!
February 3-5: Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s 17th International Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference will be held in my beautiful city of San Francisco, with a track on medicinal chemistry that will have some fragment talks, and a short course on “Fragment-Inspired Medicinal Chemistry” on February 2.
March 21-25: The spring ACS meeting will also be held in San Francisco. There will be a symposium on “Fragment Based Drug Design: Novel Approaches and Success Stories,” and Rachelle Bienstock at the FBDD LinkedIn site has put out a call for abstracts, due October 19.
April 20-25: The Keystone Symposium on computer-aided drug design will take place in brisk Whistler, British Columbia. Although not exclusively devoted to fragments, the schedule shows several talks on the topic.
April 27-28: Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Fifth Annual Fragment-Based Drug Discovery will be held in summery San Diego. This conference has also put out a call for speakers, with a deadline of October 16.
Know of anything else? Organizing a fragment event? Let us know and we’ll get the word out.
October 13: The Life Science Regional Technology Symposium will be held in Somerset, NJ, and Dr. Teddy Z. will be one of several excellent speakers.
2010
Next year is starting to take shape nicely, and two events have put out calls for abstracts, so if you have something interesting to present, now’s your chance!
February 3-5: Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s 17th International Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference will be held in my beautiful city of San Francisco, with a track on medicinal chemistry that will have some fragment talks, and a short course on “Fragment-Inspired Medicinal Chemistry” on February 2.
March 21-25: The spring ACS meeting will also be held in San Francisco. There will be a symposium on “Fragment Based Drug Design: Novel Approaches and Success Stories,” and Rachelle Bienstock at the FBDD LinkedIn site has put out a call for abstracts, due October 19.
April 20-25: The Keystone Symposium on computer-aided drug design will take place in brisk Whistler, British Columbia. Although not exclusively devoted to fragments, the schedule shows several talks on the topic.
April 27-28: Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Fifth Annual Fragment-Based Drug Discovery will be held in summery San Diego. This conference has also put out a call for speakers, with a deadline of October 16.
Know of anything else? Organizing a fragment event? Let us know and we’ll get the word out.
06 August 2009
Fragment-based conferences in 2009 and 2010
Hard to believe, but 2009 is more than halfway over. As far as I know there is only one more event this year focused primarily on fragments, but it’s a biggie, and conferences are already being planned for 2010. Here’s what might be of interest over the next few months.
August 16-20: The fall ACS meeting this year will be held in sweltering Washington, DC. Although there are no sessions devoted exclusively to fragments, a number of FBLD talks and posters are sprinkled throughout the conference.
September 21-23: Much-anticipated FBLD 2009 will be held in historic York, UK. There will also be a one-day workshop on September 20 to provide an overview of fragment-based drug discovery for newcomers to the field. The draft schedule for the conference has just been released (pdf) – looks like a great lineup, so if you missed the earlier conferences this year, don’t miss this one!
2010
February 3-5: CHI’s Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference is being held in the beautiful city of San Francisco, with a track on medicinal chemistry that will probably have some fragment talks, and a fragment workshop on February 2.
March 21-25: The spring ACS meeting will be in foggy (but beautiful) San Francisco. No schedule or link yet.
April 20-25: The Keystone Symposium on computer-aided drug design will take place in brisk Whistler, British Columbia. Although not exclusively devoted to fragments, the schedule shows plenty of talks on FBLD.
April 26: The CHI fragment-conference will be held in summery San Diego. No web link yet, but I’ll have this when it becomes available.
As always, let us know if we’ve missed anything and we’ll get the word out!
August 16-20: The fall ACS meeting this year will be held in sweltering Washington, DC. Although there are no sessions devoted exclusively to fragments, a number of FBLD talks and posters are sprinkled throughout the conference.
September 21-23: Much-anticipated FBLD 2009 will be held in historic York, UK. There will also be a one-day workshop on September 20 to provide an overview of fragment-based drug discovery for newcomers to the field. The draft schedule for the conference has just been released (pdf) – looks like a great lineup, so if you missed the earlier conferences this year, don’t miss this one!
2010
February 3-5: CHI’s Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference is being held in the beautiful city of San Francisco, with a track on medicinal chemistry that will probably have some fragment talks, and a fragment workshop on February 2.
March 21-25: The spring ACS meeting will be in foggy (but beautiful) San Francisco. No schedule or link yet.
April 20-25: The Keystone Symposium on computer-aided drug design will take place in brisk Whistler, British Columbia. Although not exclusively devoted to fragments, the schedule shows plenty of talks on FBLD.
April 26: The CHI fragment-conference will be held in summery San Diego. No web link yet, but I’ll have this when it becomes available.
As always, let us know if we’ve missed anything and we’ll get the word out!
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