LINK-J & UC San Diego Special Webinar on " The University of California Drug Discovery Consortium (UC DDC) - Its Mission and Industry Partnerships " was held on June 10, 2021. (Host: LINK-J, Co-Host: University of California San Diego [UC San Diego])
Summary
At this Special Webinar, UC San Diego campus lead Dr. Michael Gilson discussed the Consortium's core mission to provide funding and mentorship for UC researchers to advance the creation of drugs that address important unmet medical needs, and discuss its priorities to build partnerships with industry members.
Following the overview of UC DDC, the UCLA, UC Riverside and UC Berkeley campus leads discussed their recent work to showcase the drug discovery research activities under way and answered questions from the audience.
Speaker
Dr. Michael Gilson, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair in Computer-Aided Drug Design, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UC San Diego, and co-director of UC San Diego's Center for Drug Discovery Innovation
Dr. Robert Damoiseaux, PhD, Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, UCLA
Dr. Maurizio Pellecchia, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the School of Medicine of the University of California Riverside (UCR)
Dr. Julia Schaletzky, PhD, Founder of the UCB Drug Discovery Center, the Executive Director of the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases, as well as of the Immunotherapy and Vaccine Research Initiative at UC Berkeley
At the beginning of the webinar, Akihiko Soyama (President and CEO, Director, LINK-J), Ms. Miwako Waga (Director of International Outreach, UC San Diego) gave the opening remarks.
"Introduction of UC DDC Overview"
Dr. Michael Gilson, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair in Computer-Aided Drug Design, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UC San Diego, and co-director of UC San Diego's Center for Drug Discovery Innovation
Dr. Michael Gilson, Campus Lead of UC San Diego, gave a presentation on the overview of UC DDC.
The mission of UC DDC is "to utilize the biomedical research and commercialization strengths of the UC system, to accelerate the development of life-saving therapies, and to translate drug discoveries into knowledge-driven commercial enterprises . Furthermore that stimulate California's economy, and solve the most pressing health challenges of the 21st century."
He then mentioned the following advantages of the industry-academia collaboration with UC.
- Early access to the latest innovation and discovery across the UC system.
- Access to the entire UC system and full array of resources for further collaborations and partnership opportunities with thousands of UC medical researchers.
- There are pre-negotiated agreements and terms in place for expedited industry partnerships. (No need for additional engagement with university tech. transfer offices).
- UC DCC provides a "concierge" type of service to facilitate partnerships across the UC system.
After explaining the history of UC DDC, he explained the fact that the number of patents published by UC and the number of university-originated startups are far superior compared to other famous universities in the US.
Lastly, he mentioned that UC DDC is open-minded and is motivated to collaborate with industry to translate their discoveries into therapies, and would like to collaborate with Japanese industry partners and communicate with them even after the webinar.
The presentation was concluded with the contact information for each campus lead on the UC DDC website (https://www.ucdrugdiscovery.org/contact).
"Building a Drug Discovery and Development Pipeline at UCLA"
Dr. Robert Damoiseaux, PhD, Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, UCLA
Dr. Robert Damoiseaux, Campus Lead at UCLA, gave a talk on High Throughput Screening (HTS) and the research being conducted at the MSSR in the NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.
High Throughput Screening is a technology for rapidly and efficiently selecting useful compounds from a vast number of potential new drugs.
He introduced the evolutionary history of High Throughput screening, which was initially used to screen cells, but is now being used for complex targets such as the human genome and functional genomics.
Next, he talked about his own research with some examples.
Cancer cells proliferate and spread throughout the body through cell division, and mitotic inhibitors such as Taxol are used to inhibit cell division and induce cell apoptosis (cell death). He concluded his lecture by introducing his research on drug discovery of such anticancer drugs.
"Targeting Therapeutically Viable Protein-Protein Interactions: Applications in Neurodegeneration and Oncology"
Dr. Maurizio Pellecchia, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the School of Medicine of the University of California Riverside (UCR)
Dr. Maurizio Pellecchia, Campus Lead at UCR, spoke about the actual therapeutic applications of therapeutically viable protein-protein interactions (PPIs).
Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) is a general term for interactions that occur between protein molecules. Specifically, it refers to the phenomenon in which different protein molecules form complexes in vivo depending on their state. While some proteins function on their own, most proteins function by interacting with other proteins.
When targeting PPIs, peptide mimics can be used as inhibitors to improve the therapeutic efficacy of the drugs, and to reduce the risk of a single protein interacting with its receptor.
He also introduced that one protein is the receptor, and another is the ligand*, and there are various forms of ligands.
*A ligand is a substance that forms a complex with a biomolecule to serve a biological purpose.
"Discovery of approved drugs synergistic with remdesivir for COVID-19"
Dr. Julia Schaletzky, PhD, Founder of the UCB Drug Discovery Center, the Executive Director of the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases, as well as of the Immunotherapy and Vaccine Research Initiative at UC Berkeley
Dr. Schaletzky is conducting a research to discover drugs that can inhibit the activity of new coronaviruses in a biosafety level 3 laboratory, thinking that Drug Repurposing (DR) of existing drugs might be an effective way to find a cure for COVID-19.
She explained that the research was triggered by the idea of enhancing the efficacy of the existing drug remdesivir, and that the research was conducted by looking for drugs that would have a synergistic effect when used in combination with remdesivir, even if they did not have any efficacy on their own.
Please refer to the archived video for the details of the lecture.
This webinar included time for Q&A and panel discussion, which led to interesting interactions with the audience.
Thank you very much for your participation.
The recording of the webinar is available from LINK-J YouTube channel.
Please note that some of the presentations may not be available, and may be closed after a certain period of time.
We plan to offer similar sessions in the future. Stay tuned!
