Announcing the Final Programme for ELRIG Discovery Technologies 2019


Following the success of our inaugral meeting in 2018, ELRIG is pleased to invite you to the 2nd Discovery Technologies meeting to be held at Alderley Park, Macclesfield, UK on September 26th, 2019. This ELRIG meeting, which will be run in collaboration with Alderley Park, will focus on novel and emerging technologies that are improving the efficiency and success rates in the drug discovery process. The three main themes of the conference will be the application of imaging techniques in drug discovery and approaches and technologies used to address early safety assessment within the pharmaceutical industry and mechanistic enzymology in drug discovery. As always, Langton Howarth will be in attendance at the event for any career advice.

Plenary Keynote Speaker

Peter Tonge (Stony Brook University)
“Widening the Therapeutic Window: Kinetic Selectivity and Target Vulnerability”

For 2019 the conference will include three parallel sessions:

Imaging Techniques in Drug Discovery:

This session will focus on the application of imaging techniques in drug discovery, including in vitro 3D imaging approaches, MS imaging and in vivo imaging applications. The use of imaging in drug discovery is becoming increasingly routine to inform decisions with applications ranging from high throughput screening to clinical assessment. This session will explore the use of imaging in fields including investigating disease specific pathophysiology’s, characterising the pharmacokinetics / pharmacodynamics of molecules and defining disease specific therapeutic endpoints.

Approaches and technologies to address early safety assessment:

Failure rates in drug development due to adverse safety profiles are still a major problem in the industry. As a result, the pharmaceutical industry is increasingly focused on the characterisation of the safety profile in early discovery to de-risk and optimise compounds prior to further development. This session will look at approaches used to assess target organ toxicity in a discovery setting focusing on areas such as drug induced livery injury (DILI), cardiac safety assessment and immunosafety profiling of large molecules. Technology advances in this field, such as in iPSC derived and organ-on-a-chip models, will be discussed.

Mechanistic Enzymology in Drug Discovery:

Enzymes constitute a significant proportion of the druggable genome and remain a rich source of drug targets. Initiating a successful strategy for developing a modulator of enzyme activity requires an understanding of the enzyme’s mechanism to understand how physiological conditions in disease relevant cells affect inhibitor potency. This understanding is critical to determine which mechanisms of inhibition and kinetic profiles translate into improved efficacy for a specific target. Recent developments, such as kinetic characterisation approaches, data analysis software and earlier assessment of mechanism are revitalising the focus on mechanistic enzymology in drug discovery. This session will explore the current state of the art in enzyme and inhibitor characterisation and the application to successful drug discovery.

Register now for the event by visiting – www. elrig.org/2019-dt-delegate