Int’l conference discusses Informatics in drug discovery
The development of drugs is both a timely and expensive process, but with advancements in data analysis and system integration, the industry is accelerating its capacity to create more targeted and effective treatments. This conference is responding to the transformation within the pharmaceutical industry, bringing together experts working in all areas of pharmaceutical, IT and discovery informatics under one roof.
In this line an International Symposium on “Informatics Tools in Drug Discovery and Drug Delivery” was conducted at Chitkara College of Pharmacy in joint collaboration with APTI, Punjab, DPSDR Punjabi University, Patiala, and the University of Moscow, as a part of the conference from November 1-4, 2018. The conference cum hands-on training workshop was designed to stimulate/inspire minds to get involved in the process of innovative drug discovery with an idea to leverage available big data (Pharmaceutical, chemical and biological) with informatics tools.
At Chitkara College of Pharmacy, Dr Sandeep Arora coordinated the Panel Discussion on “Drug Discovery tools and Drug Approval Trends” followed by an interactive session between Hon’ble Vice Chancellor Dr. Madhu Chitkara and the experts.
During the conference, a blend of resource persons from academia and drug discovery industry enlightened the delegates for attempting drug discovery even in an academic setting. Notable experts at the conference included Dr. Dmitry Sergeevich Druzhilovskiy, Dr. Alexey Lagunin and Dr. Vladimir Poroikov from Institute of Biomedical Chemistry, Moscow; Dr. Athina Geronikaki, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece; Dr. John J Irwin, University of California, San Francisco; Dr. G Madhavi Sastry, De Shaw Research Hyderabad, India; Dr. Dmitry Osolodkin, Institute of Poliomyelitis and Viral Encephalitides, Chumakov, Moscow, Russia; Dr. G Narhari Shastri, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, India; Dr. R K Goel, Punjabi University, Patiala.
The experts deliberated and discussed – Identification and prioritization of pharmacological targets, Ligand-based methods of computer-aided drug design & discovery, Structure-based methods of computer-aided drug design & discovery, Multi-targeted pharmacological agents and network pharmacology, Natural compounds as a source for new medicines, Computational tools for predicting formulation strategies. Workshop modules included Open source computational tools and databases for drug design & discovery, Commercially available computational tools and databases for drug design & discovery, and Predictive PK studies. The International Conference was also aimed at providing a platform for initiating collaboration among drug discovery scientists of industry and academia.
