Upstate Cancer Research Institute

The New York Center for Drug Discovery and Development Symposium

Tuesday December 11, 2012
1:30 - 5 p.m.

Free and open to the public

This symposium presents the power and promise of academic drug discovery and development to translate the research and technologies of universities into new medicine for human diseases — as well as support the growth of regional and global bio economy.

The featured talks by four leading experts in the field provide the latest examples and structural, chemical, and biological perspectives of the close interplay of biomedical research and translational therapeutic development for human diseases. The presenters' expertise includes cancer, disorders of the central nervous system, infectious diseases, and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

This symposium is held in conjunction with the opening of the New York Center for Drug Discovery and Development (NYCD3), SUNY Upstate's new center to facilitate the development of academic research discoveries into clinical and commercial applications through collaboration with regional and global medical, business, and industrial communities.

Speakers include:

Ziwei Huang, PhD, Upstate Medical University
"Overview of NYCD3 and Drug Discovery and Development at Upstate"

Wayne Hendrickson, PhD, Columbia University
"Conformational Equilibria in the Allosteric Control of Hsp70 Molecular Chaperones"

Victor Hruby, PhD, University of Arizona
"The Impact of Genomics and Proteomics on Drug Design: Design of Multivalent Peptide and Peptidomimetic Ligands for Disease"

Gen-Sheng Feng, PhD, University of California San Diego
"Shp2 in Health and Diseases: From Mechanism to Therapy"

About the Speakers

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Ziwei Huang, PhD, is professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology, director of the Upstate Cancer Research Institute, and Associate Vice President for Research Partnerships and International Collaborations. Dr. Huang leads the university's efforts in forming global collaborations among research and industry partners. In other leadership roles, he unites cancer researchers locally, statewide, nationally and internationally.

Prior to joining Upstate in 2009, Dr. Huang was a faculty member at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and at the University of California at San Diego where he built a robust research program centering on the development of molecular probes that can be transformed into new therapeutic agents for the treatment of cancer. Huang's laboratory has shown that synthetic cell binding peptides can induce destruction of tumor cells and suppress the growth of tumor in mice. In addition, he discovered, using computer-screening techniques, organic compounds that mimic the tumor-killing effect of these binding peptides. Huang is planning further studies to advance these inhibitors to human clinical trials as a new class of anti-cancer drugs. Dr. Huang has lectured worldwide and published more than 100 research articles, reviews, book chapters and conference proceedings. He is editor of the book "Drug Discovery Research: New Frontiers in the Post-Genomic Era."

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Wayne A. Hendrickson is a University Professor at Columbia University in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Violin Family Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics. He is also Chief Life Scientist in the Photon Sciences Directorate at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Scientific Director of the New York Structural Biology Center. Hendrickson has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, a Ph.D. in biophysics at Johns Hopkins University with Warner Love, and postdoctoral research experience with Jerome Karle at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). He and his colleagues use biochemistry and x-ray crystallography to study molecular properties in atomic detail with current emphasis on membrane receptors and cellular signaling, on viral proteins and HIV infection, on molecular chaperones and protein folding, and on structural genomics of membrane proteins. Hendrickson's advances in diffraction methodology have contributed significantly to the emergence of structural biology as a major force in modern biology and molecular medicine.

His honors include the Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Gairdner International Award, and the Harvey Prize of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Victor J. Hruby, PhD, is Regents Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arizona. His research has been primarily in the chemistry, conformation-biological activity relationships, molecular mechanisms of information transduction and of molecular diseases associated with peptide hormones and neurotransmitters and their receptors that modulate health, disease and human behavior. Specific methods and approaches used in this research include: de novo design of biologically active peptides and peptidomimetics; peptide and peptidomimetic synthesis; asymmetric synthesis; design and asymmetric synthesis of novel amino acids; computational chemistry; conformational analysis using NMR, X-ray crystallography and other biophysical tools; combinatorial chemistry; and conformation-biological activity relationships. His group also is developing new synthetic methodologies for the assembly of multimeric ligands for the detection and treatment of pain, cancer and other diseases. Dr. Hruby has published over 1.000 articles, reviews, chapters, commentaries and editorials and has over 25 patents and patent filings. He has received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alan E. Pierce Award, a Senior Humboldt Fellowship, the American Chemical Society Ralph F. Hirschmann Award, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, the Murray Goodman Award, the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame and the Meienhofer Award.

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Gen-Sheng Feng, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, and the Molecular Biology Section, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Feng is a leading scientist in the field of signal transduction and tyrosine phosphatases. The main thrust of Dr. Feng's research is to decipher the molecular signaling mechanisms in stem cells, metabolism and cancer, using both genetic and chemical biology approaches. Dr. Feng's group has identified a critical role of Shp2 in promoting embryonic stem (ES) cell differentiation, leading to development of a chemical strategy for amplification of human and mouse ES cells in vitro. They have also found that Shp2 acts to promote leptin effect in the hypothalamus, proof of a principle for pharmaceutical enhancement of leptin signals and treatment of obesity. More recent data from his and other labs reveal paradoxical pro- and anti-tumorigenic effects of signaling molecules in liver cancer.

Dr. Feng received a PhD degree in Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Indiana University Bloomington. Before joining UCSD, Dr. Feng held faculty positions at Indiana University School of Medicine and the Sanford/Burnham Medical Research Institute. Dr. Feng has published 119 peer-reviewed research papers, review and book chapters. He has served on MCB and JBC editorial boards and NIH study sections.