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Global Opportunities of Biopharmaceutics at “Drug Discovery Collaboratory”

Senyon Choe with Al Gore
New opportunities in modern biology are quickly emerging thanks to two major biological advancements made in recent decades. One is the advancement of the entire human genome. The knowledge of genomics allows us to experimentally address the physiological role of every gene of the human genome. Read More

The other advancement is the emergence of ingenious molecular biological methods. These allow us to design and engineer our genes at genetic and organismic levels to better explore clinical benefits of many uncharacterized genes of the human genome. As a result, modern biopharmaceutical industries are rapidly expanding their drug candidates to include protein drugs known as biologics (e.g. growth-controlling proteins, monoclonal antibodies, insulin, or interferons), and developing stem cell therapeutics using engineered biologics as new means to cure diseases.

The rapid pace of discoveries has set the stage for a new type of global collaboration between academia and biopharmaceutical companies. Drug Discovery Collaboratory (DDColl) has been conceived to facilitate efficient knowledge-sharing that addresses worldwide health concerns and diseases that have been typically overlooked from a business perspective despite their importance for global health. DDColl will pool research funds from pharmaceutical enterprises as well as government and philanthropic agencies to find these cures using a common technological platform, initially focusing on elucidating atomic structures of human membrane proteins to speed up drug and antibody design through a combination of computational and NMR technologies. An international workshop CNDY in Taiwan is set to launch in December 2013 to disseminate new drug discovery tools.

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