The theme Chemistry of Life was developed by Thematic Program Chair, Dr. Peter Senter (Vice President of Chemistry, Seattle Genetics & Senior Editor, Bioconjugate Chemistry).
The theme will cover advancements made in basic and applied research towards understanding the chemistry of life, both at the molecular and macroscopic levels.
Special interdisciplinary symposia related to the theme are (times and locations forthcoming):
Chemical Networks in Biology- will discuss how the integration of analytical, molecular and computational technologies has been applied to address issues of great biological systems in predictable manners.
Epigenetics: From Basic Principles to Drug Development will discuss our current understanding of the biochemical basis for differential gene expression and for the inheritance of gene expression states during development.
Materials as Medicines: A New Direction for Disease Imaging and Treatment will cover important research advances and challenges to the development of materials as potential medicines and diagnostic agents.
Drug Polypharmacology Prediction and Design will describe success stories of seamless integration of cost-effective in silico approaches and intensive experimental studies for polypharmacological agent design. In addition, curation of high quality data and implementation of novel algorithms will also be presented on how to correctly distill data into knowledge for reliable predictions.
Protein Conjugates: From Basic Principles to Clinically Active Drugs will present latest results on site-selective chemical modification of proteins, chemically programmed antibodies and a new approach to vaccines, chemoselective strategies for synthesis of proteins and labeling of nanoparticles, permanent and cleavable linkages for protein therapeutics, photo-immunotherapy for target-specific cancer theranostics, covalent targeting of cancer for imaging and therapy, an antibody-drug conjugate just approved for clinical cancer treatment, and immunopolymeric nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery.
Included in this event will be the Kavli Lecture by Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi. Dr. Bertozzi’s research focuses on applications of chemistry and nanoscience in the study of cellular processes. The Bertozzi group has developed chemical approaches for profiling changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with cancer and identified metabolic pathways in Mycobacterium tuberculosis that are candidate drug targets. The Bertozzi group has developed new materials engineered at the nanometer scale to mimic the biological materials mucin and bone, and has developed biomimetic coatings for nanotubes that enable their use in biological systems.
Conference Hound