REDWOOD CITY, Calif., and NEW YORK, N.Y., November 15, 2012 -- SciBX: Science-Business eXchange today announced the publication of “Bringing Macrocycles Full Circle,” a Roadmap to Innovation in the field of macrocycles and constrained peptides. This first-of-its-kind SciBX Roadmap to Innovation is being published in the November 15 edition of SciBX, a joint venture between BioCentury Publications, Inc., the internationally respected source of biopharma business intelligence, and Nature Publishing Group (NPG). SciBX identifies commercially promising translational science and assesses the next steps required to develop it.
The Roadmap identifies four critical areas in the macrocycle space where more research is needed to advance a field that promises to reach therapeutic targets that have been inaccessible to existing small molecule drugs and biologics. More effort in three of these areas -- pharmacokinetics, cell permeability and oral bioavailability -- would create an understanding of the rules that govern the behavior of macrocycles and thus enable developers to better identify drug-like compounds. The fourth critical area is the issue of how macrocycles engage their targets.
The Roadmap is available for download at http://www.nature.com/scibx/journal/v5/n45/full/scibx.2012.1176.html.
“Bringing Macrocycles Full Circle” is the result of the inaugural SciBX Innovation in Drug Discovery and Development Summit. The Summit was organized by BioCentury and Nature Publishing Group and sponsored by Aileron Therapeutics Inc.; Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN); BioDuro/PPD Inc. (NASDAQ:PPDI); Ipsen (Euronext:IPN; ADR:IPSEY); MedImmune LLC; PeptiDream Inc.; Sanofi (Euronext:SAN; NYSE:SNY); Sofinnova Ventures; Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (Tokyo:4502); and Third Rock Ventures.
The Summit culminated the work of a “think tank” of key opinion leaders from academia, biotech, pharma and the investment community, organized and moderated by the SciBX editorial team over the summer. The think tank consisted of Bruce Booth, Partner at Atlas Venture; Spiros Liras, Vice President of Cardiovascular, Metabolic and Endocrine Medicinal Chemistry at Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE); Barry Morgan, Vice President of Molecular Discovery Research at GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE:GSK; NYSE:GSK); Patrick Reid, Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer at PeptiDream; Tomi Sawyer, Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery & Innovative Technologies at Aileron; and Gregory Verdine, Professor at Harvard University and Venture Partner at Third Rock Ventures.
The think tank convened with other key opinion leaders, including CEOs and CSOs of macrocycle companies and top academics in the field, at the recent SciBX Summit in Boston to discuss the challenges and opportunities afforded by the field and how to best direct efforts towards realizing its innovation potential.
The Roadmap includes calls by the Summit participants for the establishment of precompetitive collaborations to tackle challenges such as the systematic study of which macrocycles pass into cells, and for the prioritization by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding agencies of initiatives to improve our understanding of key underlying biological mechanisms.
“The unique approach to these Summits, consisting of in depth discussions with the members of the think tank and culminating with an open forum with additional key stake holders, allowed the SciBX editorial team to generate an independent and detailed Roadmap to Innovation in the macrocycle space that presents a one-of-a-kind perspective of what will be needed to make innovation happen,” said Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg, Managing Editor and Associate Publisher of SciBX.
“The goal of the SciBX Summit initiative was to address an unmet need for key opinion leaders to reach consensus on how to overcome roadblocks to drug innovation,” said Karen Bernstein, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of BioCentury. “The resulting SciBX Roadmap to Innovation provides a template for our future efforts with Nature Publishing Group as we address other translational challenges that must be solved to bring healthcare innovation to patients.”
The SciBX editorial team is already preparing for the next SciBX Summit in 2013. The editors are considering new targets, pathways and therapeutic approaches that will become the subject of the next SciBX Roadmap for Innovation.
For information about sponsoring the next SciBX Summit, contact Thomas Carey at BioCentury, or Claire Thompson at Nature Publishing Group.
About Macrocycles & Constrained Peptides
Molecules in the 500-5,000 Da size range have burst onto the drug discovery stage as a way to bridge the gap between small molecules and biologics. The hope is that these molecular entities will combine the pharmacological properties of small molecules with the specificity of biologics to address intracellular protein-protein interactions that have been considered undruggable.
About BioCentury
Now in its 20th year, BioCentury Publications, Inc. provides essential biopharma industry intelligence to a global audience of biotech and pharmaceutical executives, investors, regulators and public policy makers, and the scientific community. This audience has benefited from BioCentury’s deep knowledge, data-driven analysis, independent perspective and trustworthy content available through the company’s publications, data products and collaborative industry conferences in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
BioCentury’s titles include the flagship BioCentury®, the Bernstein Report on BioBusiness; its SciBX: Science-Business eXchange™ translational science partnership with Nature Publishing Group; and its BioCentury Extra™ online daily newspaper. These timely journals are backed by BCIQ: BioCentury Online Intelligence™, an online business intelligence resource. BioCentury also produces its BioCentury This Week biotech public affairs television program in partnership with the Gannett-owned WUSA9 CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C. The program is aired in Washington each Sunday as part of the WUSA9 “Sunday Morning Power Block,” and distributed globally online at www.biocenturytv.com.
For more information, visit www.biocentury.com and www.biocenturytv.com.
About Nature Publishing Group (NPG)
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