Evolving Approaches to Early-Stage Drug Discovery (Z2) 2011

This meeting will cover multiple aspects of the challenges and opportunities facing drug discovery scientists. These challenges include: 1) diverse approaches to early stage discovery in a resource constrained environment, 2) evolution of preclinical drug discovery in academia, 3) evolution of drug leads/target validation from the NIH (MLPCN), 4) funding early stage/risky programs, 5) external licensing of programs and 6) advances in biomarkers/imaging to enable target selection and rapid go/no go decisions. The meeting goals are to bring together experts in all of these areas, present findings/opinions and initiate dialog on these topics. This would be the first meeting to bring together drug discovery scientists form big Pharma, biotech, academia, the MLPCN and Foundations – each with unique missions and approaches and share their respective experiences.