The Ferryman

Satisfying REACH Requirements in Predictive Toxicology

The OpenTox workshop on "Satisfying REACH Requirements in Predictive Toxicology" to be held at the ISS in Rome 10-11 September 2009. 

Participants at the workshop will involve cross-industry users and regulatory experts in addition to solution developers and providers who will discuss the requirements and use cases of users in chemical toxicology evaluation and risk assessment, and including satisfaction of current and future requirements of the REACH legislation using alternative testing methods. The workshop format involves short presentations to provide user, regulatory and solution needs perspectives, followed by knowledge cafe discussions discussing use cases, challenges, issues, solutions, collaboration opportunities and ways forward in small groups.

PROGRAM

Thursday 10 September

08.30 Welcome Coffee

09.00 Introduction & Workshop Overview, Barry Hardy (OpenTox and Douglas Connect, Switzerland)

09.15 The Use of Computational Methods for the in silico  Prediction of Chemical Properties in REACH, Andrew P Worth (Systems Toxicology Unit, Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, European Commission -Joint Research Centre, Italy)

09.40 Automated Workflows for Hazard Assessment, Elena Fioravanzo (S-IN Soluzioni Informatiche, Italy)

10.05 OpenTox Predictive Toxicology Use Cases, Barry Hardy (OpenTox and Douglas Connect, Switzerland)

10.30 Coffee Break

11.00 Knowledge Café Discussions

12.30 Group Discussion

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Opportunities for using  Systems Biology Data for in silico  Modeling of Personalized Medicine, Richard D. Beger  (Division of Systems Toxicology, National Center for Toxicological Research, Food and Drug Administration, USA)

14.25 A Framework for Using Structural, Reactivity, Metabolic and Physicochemical Similarity to Evaluate the Suitability of Analogs for SAR-based Toxicological Assessments, Joanna Jaworska (Procter & Gamble, Modeling & Simulation, Biological Systems, Brussels Innovation Center, Belgium)

 14.50 Integration of Integrated Assessment Tools for Environmental Risk Assessment, Willie Peijnenburg (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, The Netherlands)

15.15 Prediction of Animal Toxicity Endpoints for ToxCAST Phase I Compounds using a Combination of Chemical and Biological in vitro Descriptors, Alex Tropsha (Carolina Center for Computational Toxicology and Carolina Environmental Bioinformatics Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)

15.40 Coffee Break

16.00 Knowledge Café Discussions

17.30 Group Discussion

18.00 Close

 

Friday 11 September

08.30 Welcome Coffee

09.00 Predictive Toxicology for Cosmetics - An Industry Perspective, Stephanie Ringeissen (Safety Research Department, L’Oréal R&D, France)

09.25 OECD (Q)SAR Application Toolbox: Progress and Ongoing Developments, (OECD, Paris, France)

09.50 Italian Specialty Chemical Industry Perspective on Predictive Toxicology, Maurizio Colombo (Health & Safety Evaluation, Industrial Regulation Management, Lamberti S.p.A., Italy)

10.15 Coffee Break

10.45 Knowledge Café Discussions

12.00 Group Discussion

12.30 Lunch

13.30 The Italian Chemical Industry and the REACH impact on SMEs, Antonio Conto (Chemsafe Srl, Italy)

13.55 Classification- and Regression-Based QSAR of Chemical Toxicity on the Basis of Structural and Physicochemical Similarity, Oleg Raevsky (Department of Computer-Aided Molecular Design, Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia)

14.20 Analysis of Toxcast Data and in vitro / in vivo Endpoint Relationships, Romualdo Benigni (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy)

14.45 Coffee Break

15.15 Knowledge Café Discussions

16.30 Group Discussion

17.00 Close

More Information including Abstracts:

http://www.opentox.org/data/blogentries/public/opentoxworkshoprome09

InnovationWell 2009 Program

The fifth InnovationWell Community of Practice InterAction Meeting will take place from October 13-16, 2009 at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, PA. This year's program has sessions on:

Translational Bioinformatics: Bridging Bioinformatics and Biomedical Informatics in Translational Medicine, chaired by Jake Chen (Indiana University)

Systems Biology and Biomarkers, Chaired by Darius Dziuda (Central Connecticut State University)

Modeling of the Blood–Brain Barrier in Drug Discovery and Development, Chaired by Roméo Cecchelli (Université d'Artois, France)

Predictive Toxicology: Combining in vitro and in silico Techniques in Predictive Toxicology Applications, Co-chaired by Richard Judson (US EPA) and Vladimir Poroikov (Institute of Biomedical Chemistry of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences)

Pre-Conference workshop
We will also hold a pre-conference forum on October 12 on Collaboration in Discovery and Development, Co-chaired by Peter Gates (Johnson & Johnson PR&D) and Barry Hardy (Douglas Connect).

Full details of the conference program including abstracts and speaker bios can be seen at:
http://innovationwell.net/comty_conferences
 
Or you can download a copy of the program as a pdf here:

Download InnovationWell-BM09-90812

 

Dear Michael, Thanks, Respects and Inspiration to you (Michael Jackson)

Thanks Michael for all those great music videos in the 80's.  You were a leader, an innovator, doing completely new and great things back then.  You entertained us when we took a break from our studies in college in the early 80s, and tried out this new MTV experience at the time.  (It was much more interesting back then!)  You were a Thriller!

Respects to you Michael, we played and danced to your songs last night, and were not alone.

Inspiration Michael, if we can take inspiration from your tragedy and Childhood legacy you could not shake off, it is that we should take some more time to reach out to our family, friends and contacts.  Even if it is that business partner, don't just always email them, get on the Skype with them, talk and get some understanding, build some shared meaning, reach out and support. As you said:

You are not alone, I am here with you
Though you're far away, I am here to stay
You are not alone, I am here with you
Though we're far apart, You're always in my heart

And if you want to collaborate folks in this flatter world don't be alone and far away. Reach out!

The Ferryman

Collaboration in Drug Discovery and Development

I am co-chairing with Peter Gates (Johnson & Johnson) a forum session on Collaboration in Drug Discovery and Development which will take place on October 12-13 to kick-off the InnovationWell 2009 Community of Practice Meeting, which will be hosted at Bryn Mawr College (near Philadelphia) the week of October 12-16, 2009.

The specific goals of the forum are to discuss developments in collaboration support including:

- the challenges and requirement complexities across time, function and organizational spaces
- key ingredients for combined collaboration and innovation success
- promising practices, models, and solutions for collaboration
- service requirements for flexibility, evolution, and learning characteristics
- accounting for structural and business model changes in the healthcare industry environment
- key requirements and directions for collaboration infrastructure
- potential and actions for collaborative approaches to collaboration infrastructure development

Research is by its nature a set of disciplines that are undergoing constant change. Development in contrast, largely due to safety considerations, is a set of disciplines that are looking for stability, reliability and consistency. We must add to this the scale in terms of resources and duration of the pharmaceutical research and development process.

These factors combine to create formidable challenges in the creation of effective collaborative strategies. We will discuss specifically the need to build support for collaboration where change and adaptability are requirements that must be specifically engineered into our collaborative solutions.

The goal of the forum is to bring together a variety of perspectives to discuss the opportunities, challenges, practices and solutions required for successful collaboration in advancing drug discovery and development goals in an increasingly collaborative virtualized environment. We call on participants to consider a diversity of perspectives to include technical, business, scientific, medical, intellectual property, culture, and knowledge management viewpoints.

A Knowledge Café involving all forum participants will be used to have an extensive discussion of experiences and opinions.

Speakers can also submit a perspective manuscript before the meeting for refereed publication in a special focus issue to be published by the Future Science Group in Future Medicinal Chemistry in early 2010, for which Peter and I as chairs will also act as guest editors for, and to which we also intend to provide a group industry perspective as an outcome from the forum to.

Please contact Peter and I if interested in proposing a perspective to seed the discussions.

Barry Hardy

Email: barry.hardy -(at)- douglasconnect.com

InnovationWell 2009 - Call for Contributions

We will return to Bryn Mawr for our fifth InnovationWell community of practice meeting which will take place 13 - 16 October 2009 at Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia.

We invite contributed papers from members of academic, government research and commercial organizations on areas of new research and innovation relevant to innovation and knowledge management in the life sciences. The work presented should involve innovative new method development or application in the areas of systems biology, translational medicine, knowledge management, computational biology, metabolomics, predictive ADME, predictive toxicology or bioinformatics. Studies including experimental work in medicinal chemistry, screening, novel in vitro assay development, pre-clinical evaluation, and translational medicine are welcome.

Abstracts (300-500 words) should be submitted to innovationwell -[at]- douglasconnect.com by 31 March 2009, and be accompanied by a short biography of the presenting author (300-500 words). Abstracts approved by the scientific organizing committee will be selected for scheduling on the conference program and in meeting poster sessions. Authors will be notified of acceptance as soon as a review of submitted materials takes place and at the latest by 15 April 2009.

The conference organising group includes Peter Gates (Johnson & Johnson PR&D), Barry Hardy (Douglas Connect, Switzerland), Frank Tobin (Tobin Consulting), Richard Judson (US EPA), Vladimir Poirokov (Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia), Romeo Cecchelli (Université d'Artois, France), Jimmy Chen (DOV Pharmaceutical), and Peter Elkin (Mount Sinai Medical Center).

Predictive ADME and Toxicology workshop in Oxford

For the first time we are holding a predictive ADME and Toxicology workshop in Oxford this summer.  It should be a valuable and rewarding experience that adds to our summer workshop activities there.  I believe we have a really good group of facilitators gathered that should make for an excellent working week. We will take a hands-on, problem-solving approach to case study datasets throughout the week.

More information at:
http://barryhardy.blogs.com/cheminfostream/2009/02/predictive-adme-and-toxicology-workshop-in-oxford.html

Barry

This year's Knowledge Management Training Week in Basel

We have had rewarding Knowledge Management Training weeks in Basel the past two years and an excellent international group of managers and practitioners with us from many countries, industries and different perspectives.  In addition to the extensive eLearning and practice-based teaching, the group interactions, exercises and end-of-week presentations have been productive and enriching.

We continue to develop the faculty for the program with this year's training week supported by a group of six leading instructors and facilitators with an excellent combination of experience and skills needed to cover and support the full breadth of topics and discussions. 

The Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) Training week will take place 4-8 May 2009 at the Merian Hotel in Basel.  You will find more information at:
http://douglasconnect.com/html/knowledge.htm
and can download a pdf brochure from here:

Download KMTrainingBrochure

I hope you can make it!

Barry

Ensemble, Integrated and Systems Dynamics Approaches to Systems Biology

In our InnovationWell session chaired by Keith Elliston (Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Genstruct, Inc.) taking place the morning of 14 October 2008 at Bryn Mawr, we will have the following 3 systems biology perspectives presented:

Darius M. Dziuda (Central Connecticut State University), Ensemble Classifiers and Biomarker Discovery
Frank Tobin (Tobin Consulting), Integrative Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems
David S. Lester (Innovative Technologies in Health and Wellness, Inc.), Using a Systems Approach to Determine Diabetic Patient Interventions and Outcomes

The perspectives will be followed by a knowledge café discussion, lunch and in the afternoon a further related session on computational biology chaired by Debraj GuhaThakurta (Rosetta Inpharmatics, Merck & Co.):

http://barryhardy.blogs.com/theferryman/2008/08/computational-b.html

A description of the session with presentation abstracts follows.  Please add your comments, discussion or questions at the end of the post.

(Please follow continuation here to read abstracts.  Comments can be made at the end.)

InnovationWell Systems Biology KM Knowledge Management bioinformatics Computational Biology Translational Medicine Molecular Medicine biology pharmaceutical pharma meeting workshop training Critical Path toxicology Life Sciences Drug Discovery Research and Development Drug Development Healthcare Innovation Innovation Management events

Schedule for InnovationWell and eCheminfo Autumn 2008 Community of Practice Meeting

I provide below a schedule for the upcoming InnovationWell and eCheminfo Community of Practice meetings at Bryn Mawr.

I also include a location map here which may be useful upon arrival:

Download bryn_mawr_campus_map_douglas_connect_meeting.pdf

[Please follow continuation here to view schedule.]

The Push and Pull of Knowledge Management in R&D

Knowledge Management in the pharmaceutical industry has been undergoing a transition over the past 5-10 years. With recent changes occurring in the industry, shifts in the research focus at both large pharmaceuticals and small-mid size pharmaceuticals and biotechs are becoming more common. The way we view the information food chain has had to change. We are in a world where we need to have greater flexibility and easier access to data than ever before. We are typically working with external as well as internal collaborators on our project teams.

On the 13 October 2008 at the InnovationWell Community of Practice Meeting at Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, we will run a workshop on the Push and Pull of Knowledge Management in R&D, which will be chaired by John Conway (Accelrys) and Frank Hollinger (Sphaera Pharma).

The objective of the workshop will be to discuss how Knowledge Management Systems are being developed in this new age, how they are being used and what changes we as a community should be pushing for in the next generation of systems. Keeping an eye toward doing things ‘right’ while remaining cost conscious, we are often presented with a challenge to put the ‘best’ system in place. Participants will discuss ways forward in solving this problem within organizations, collaborations and discovery teams.

User Perspectives will be used to seed discussions on current and future research needs in Knowledge Management in R&D support systems, which will be carried out using a wiki-supported Knowledge Cafe format.

Program & Schedule
09.00 Frank Brown (Accelrys), Data is only Valuable if you can Extract the Information
09.30 Chris Culberson (Merck Research Laboratories), WISK: What I Should Know – Mining Chemical Transformations to see What Really Works

10.00 Ralph T. Mosley (Pharmasset), Going Big to Small: What happens when you leave Big Pharma?
10.30 Coffee Break
11.00 Knowledge Cafe on Perspectives
12.30 Group Discussion
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Tim McIntyre (GlaxoSmithKline), Workflow Application Enhances Productivity
14.30 Chris Smith (Pfizer), Risk-based Decision Making based on Complex Physical Chemical, Environmental Fate and Toxicological Effect Data Sets for Pharmaceutical Products and their Intermediates
15.00 Barry Hardy (Douglas Connect), Knowledge-Oriented Collaboration in Virtual Organisation Structures
15.30 Coffee Break
16.00 Knowledge Cafe on Perspectives
17.30 Group Discussion
18.30 Knowledge-sharing Dinner

A description of the abstracts for the session perspectives follows:

The Push and Pull of Knowledge Management in R&D 

http://innovationwell.net/COMTY_kmworkshopbm08

(Please follow continuation here to read abstracts.  Comments can be made at the end.)