Conference: Translational Strategies for Therapeutics Discovery Through Dementia Biomarkers

A meeting organized by the NUHS Memory Aging & Cognition Centre

Singapore 5th & 6th September 2011

Auditorium, NUHS TowerBlock, Level 1

 

This meeting seeks to provide its participants and audience an up-to-date evaluation of potential pharmacological strategies to medicate for a disease which currently has no significantly efficacious disease modifying interventions. Participants will be from academia and industry, with a balance of preclinical drug discovery and clinical drug-development perspectives.

 

 

This conference will offer academic and pharmaceutical industry participants an up-to-date overview on efforts in biomarker validation, drug discovery and development of novel pharmacotherapeutics to treat dementias such as Alzheimer's disease.This conference aims to provide participants an exceptional learning and networking opportunity for those working in the management of dementia.

 

 

Academia
Professor Colin Masters (University of Melbourne) "The natural history of Alzheimer's disease: biomarker strategies for diagnosis and therapy"

Professor Takeshi Iwatsubo (University of Tokyo) "The contributions of J-ADNI to biomarker discovery in dementia"

 

Professor Vincent Mok (Chinese University of Hong Kong) "Biomarkers for Vascular Cognitive Impairment"

 

Dr Diego Sepulveda-Falla (University of Hamburg) "Pre-dementia stages in AD : a retrospective cohort study of families with the presenilin 1 E280A early-onset AD mutation"

 

 

Industry
Dr John Dunlop (Pfizer, Groton) "Utility of CSF and plasma AD biomarkers in drug discovery" 

 

Dr Patrick May (Eli Lilly, Indianapolis) "Translation of BACE I inhibitor from mouse to man"

Dr Trevor Twose (Mithridion, Madison) "Biomarkers in the development of muscarinic agonists for neurodegenerative diseases"

Dr Mark Treherne (Senexis, Cambridge, England) "Directly targeting pathological amyloid for AD therapy"

Dr John Beaver (Maccine, Singapore - former GSK) "Imaging markers measuring drug efficacy in dementia"

Professor Paul Maruff (CogState, Melbourne) "Decision making about cognitive enhancement in human clinical trials; influences of information from translational medicine"

Professor Lars Farde (Astra Zeneca/Karolinska Institute, Stockholm) "New radioligands for sensitive PET-detection of amyloid in Alzheimer's Disease" 

Professor Christer Halldin (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm) "New Translational PET-imaging - from rodents to humans" 

 

Local Speakers
Professor David Townsend (Clinical Imaging Research Centre) "MRI-PET and biomarker discovery in dementia" 

 

Professor Fu Xin Yuan (National University of Singapore) "Epigenetic alterations regulated by the STAT pathway in neural systems"

 

Associate Professor Christopher Chen (National University of Singapore) "Using Biomarkers in Clinical Diagnosis" 

 

Associate Professor Qiu Anqi (National University of Singapore) "Magnetic Resonance Imaging in dementia" 

 

Assistant Professor Kamran Ikram (National University of Singapore) "Retinal Imaging as a biomarker in dementia" 

 

• What is the future for CSF amyloid-beta 42 as a biomarker for AD and what can we learn from previous clinical trials?

 

• What can drug developers learn from biomarkers in patient cohort studies?

 

• What are the challenges to developing biomarkers for a tau based therapeutic strategy?

 

• What greater potential do cognition, Imaging and other biomarkers offer over biochemical markers in CSF/plasma as biomarkers of dementia?

 

• Will biochemical biomarkers from CSF/plasma be sufficient to predict efficacy in clinical trials for dementia?

 

• How can imaging and other biomarkers be applied pre-clinically & clinically to develop new dementia therapeutics?

 

This meeting will have a strong presence from current leaders in academia and the pharmaceutical industry to bring their perspective on the current state and future direction of novel therapeutic development for dementia.