MipTec 2014

MipTec 2014 - the grandiose event was held in Basel, the capital of the global pharmaceutical industry. Each year, industry leaders gather to talk about the most perspective directions in the drug-discovery. And for the first time there was the special aging symposium devoted to practical applications of aging research for drug discovery.
Under the auspices of the Novartis and Roche it was absolutely unique.
Many relevant guests and professionals visited this forum, and thanks to Alex Zhavoronkov there were amazing lectures, scientific stars from all over the world. Brian Kennedy, Charles Cantor, Nir Barzilai and many others.
It seems that serious changes for the better has begun. Biomedical paradigm can be shifted by these talented researchers of aging, and then supported by Big Pharma (for example, total capitalization of Novartis and Roche is more than $500 billions) new drugs for healthy longevity will be implemented in our daily lives.
And even if projects such as Google Calico not totally overcome the aging, serious players like Novartis or Roche will achieve positive significant results.
Healthy and long longevity to all!

New sight on neurodegeneration age-related disorders.

The neurodegeneration is one of the features of aging and age-related disorders. Yet, only several antiaging interventions are known to affect the processes of neurodegeneration. Here we show that overexpression of the pro-longevity gene D-GADD45 in Drosophila neurons leads to a postponed manifestation of histological and ultrastructural features of age-dependent neurodegeneration, such as decrease in the packing density of neurons, increasing the degree of neuron cytoplasmic vacuolization, and morphological defects of mitochondrial cristae. Thus, the previously observed (Plyusnina, Biogerontology 12: 211–226, 2011) life extending effect of D-GADD45 overexpression in the nervous system is associated with delayed neurodegeneration.

Novartis and Practical Applications of Aging Research for Drug Discovery forum

  Good news!

Alex Zhavoronkov: 

"The dawn of aging pharmacology in Basel! Dr. Joerg Reinhardt, the chairman of the board of Novartis, world's largest pharmaceutical company, delivered a powerful, engaging and motivating talk to representatives of the drug discovery community at all levels implicating aging as the most important focus area for the future. His talk was predominantly focused on aging research and on early success stories and ideas on how to bring novel geroprotectors to market.

We salute Novartis and the many internal champions, who are driving this to translate the blurry dream of healthy productive longevity into abundant and tangible reality".

                           

Dr. Joerg Reinhardt, the chairman of the board of Novartis, world's largest pharmaceutical company, delivered a powerful, engaging and motivating talk to representatives of the drug discovery community at all levels implicating aging as the most important focus area for the future.

The Future of Aging and Aging Disease Prevention is Bright with the Growth of InSilico Medicine’s Scientific Advisory Board

Three distinguished experts have joined InSilico Medicine, including Donald Small, MD, PhD, Kristen Fortney, PhD and Alexey Moskalev, DSc.

InSilico Medicine proudly announces that Donald Small, MD, PhD, Kristen Fortney, PhD and Alexey Moskalev, DSc will aid the company’s mission to successful drug discovery and personalized medicine. It is clear meaningful progress is being made to battle aging from InSilico Medicine, considering the past major SAB additions.

Dr. Small serves as the Director of the Pediatric Oncology Division of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital. His motivation to play a role in the lives of young cancer patients tremendously impacts his research goals and long term efforts. The InSilico team is very excited to see how his experience will inspire the ongoing research and development.

“InSilico Medicine is poised to make major contributions to treat aging and other diseases. Their proprietary software and brilliant young scientists have impressed me. I look forward to contributing in any way I can to their strategies and discoveries," said Dr. Small.

Kristen Fortney is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, where she works on the genetics of human longevity. She obtained a PhD from the University of Toronto. Her work consists of the application of computational biology tools to problems in translational medicine, focusing on aging and age-related disease. The technical guidance she will have to offer will play a large role in development and future goals of InSilico Medicine.

“InSilico Medicine has an innovative informatics approach to find new therapies that may treat age-related disease and slow aging. I am excited to join the InSilico Medicine advisory team and look forward to working with them to advance their technology," said Dr. Fortney.

Dr. Moskalev, from the Institute of Biology of Komi Science Center of RAS is Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Radiobiology and Gerontology. He also teaches at Syktyvkar State University. Much of his focus has been on DNA repair and molecular mechanisms involved with aging. Dr. Moskalev’s leadership and global knowledge of aging research will play a key role in the delivery of InSilico Medicine’s solutions.
“While experiments in model organisms are extremely important for both cancer and aging research, advances in computing, availability of the vast amount of omics data and rapidly improving understanding of the underlying molecular processes allow for the many experiments to be performed in silico. The GeroScope system developed by Insilico Medicine at the very least allows to narrow down the large lists of geroprotective drugs to be tested in animals and for some drugs and combinations directly in humans. The system may be used for improving clinical trials decisions and possibly for personalized preventative medicine," said Dr. Moskalev.

Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of InSilico Medicine, puts this exciting SAB addition into context,
"Aging lies at the core of the many global problems and there is an urgent need to extend the healthy productive longevity of the aging population while staying within the regulatory and ethical frameworks and boundaries and implement novel business models that will boost the confidence of the many industry stakeholders. The addition of these three world-class experts to our SAB strengthens our ability to develop new approaches to screening for drugs that may help delay the aging processes or repair the age-associated damage. Our approach to applied aging research stems from many years of cancer research and personalized medicine and some of the tissue profiling and drug selection methods are already employed in clinical research."

On top of this, InSilico Medicine recently announced to the public about OncoFinder, its novel algorithm that will streamline the transcriptome analysis process.

About InSilico Medicine

InSilico Medicine was founded in early 2014 and has since developed the OncoFinder and Geroscope. It is a company dedicated to finding novel solutions towards aging and age-related diseases using advances in genomics and big data analysis. Through internal expertise and extensive collaborations with brilliant scientists, institutions, and highly credible pharmaceutical companies, InSilico Medicine seeks to revolutionize personalized science and drug discovery. More can be read about InSilico Medicine, Inc. at
 http://www.insilicomedicine.com.

Note to Editors
Contact
Michael Petr
Market Research Associate
michael.petr@insilicomedicine.com

International symposium on geroprotectors: Practical Applications of Aging Research for Drug Discovery

Aging lies at the core of every age-related disease and affects every person on the planet. It represents an unbearable toll on the economies of the developed countries resulting in over two trillion dollars in direct medical costs, costs of caring and lost producyo in the US and EU alone. Yet, pharmaceutical companies fail to see the practical applications of aging research as many early experiments with drugs that held promise in slowing the aging processes resulted in commercial failures and write offs. Lack of business models, regulation and absence of a clear set of aging biomarkers make it difficult for large pharmaceutical companies to fully engage in aging research. Unlike other events that are geared towards academia or have a broad range of topics, this forum intends to focus on drug discovery and pharmaceuticals that may have a role in postponing the aging processes, preventing the age-related diseases and evaluating the effectiveness of various small molecules with geroprotective properties.

The event will showcase the research projects in aging research to the leaders of the pharmaceutical industry. The symposium will comprise into the three sessions relevant to the drug discovery companies. Each session will be chaired by the top expert in the field: 

Session I: Predicting the activity of geroprotective drugs: in-silico screening, omics data analysis and rational drug design
Session II: Drugs with the potential geroprotective properties
Session III: Aging Biomarkers: how do we measure aging and geroprotective efficacy?
Session IV: Trends in Aging Research and Drug Discovery.

My dearest friends, please note the schedule update for the Practical Applications of Aging Research for Drug Discovery forum in Basel. Registration is Free. Please use the interactive meeting planner at www.miptec.ch . For more information and forum schedule you may see http://www.agingpharma.org/2014/09/important-forum-schedule-update.html

The forum is organized by Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD  (The Biogerontology Research Foundation, UK) and Bhupinder Bullar, PhD (Novartis Pharma AG, Switzerland)

 It is interesting to note that forum collect so many briliant scientists in one place such as:

Brian Kennedy PhD, Director, CEO, Buck Institute for Aging Research

Charles Cantor PhD, Professor, Boston University

Nir Barzilai, Director, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Joan Mannick, PhD, Director, Translational Medicine, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research

Anton Buzdin, PhD, DSc, President, CEO, Pathway Pharmaceuticals, Hong Kong

Joao Pedro De Magalhaes, PhD, Lab Head, University of Liverpool

Alexander Zhavoronkov, PhD, Director, The Biogerontology Research Foundation, CEO, Insilico Medicine, Inc 

Robert Molinari, PhD, CEO, Retrotope, Inc

Dr. Joerg Reinhardt, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Novartis

Alexey Moskalev, PhD,

DScBhupinder Bhullar, PhD

William Bains, PhD, Head of the SENS Laboratory, Cambridge

Sven Bulterijs, PhD, Post-grad researcher, Yale University

Olga Kovalchuk, PhD, Professor, Lab Head, University of Lethbridge, Director, Canada Cancer and Aging Research Laboratories

Mikhail Blagosklonny, MD, PhD, Professor, Editor-in-Chief of Aging, Cell Cylcle and Oncotarget high-impact journals, Rosewell Park, NY

Blanka Rogina, PhD, Director Genetics & Developmental Biology Graduate Program, University of Connecticut

James Kirkland, MD, PhD, Professor, Mayo Clinic

Barry Merriman, PhD, Professor, UCLA / Lead System Architect, CSO, Thermo Fisher Scientific     

Alexander Bürkle, PhD, Professor, EU MARK-AGE Co-ordinator, University of Konstanz

Vadim Gladyshev, PhD, Professor, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Director of Redox Medicine, Medicine, Brigham And Women's Hospital, Harvard

Antonei Benjamin Csoka, PhD, Assoc. Professor, Howard University, CEO, Vision Genomics, Inc

Richard Faragher, Professor, University of Brighton 

Geoffrey Furlonger, CEO, Aging Analytics, Charles Groome, Head of Communications, Aging Analytics UK

Dmitry Kaminskiy, Director, Senior Partner, Deep Knowledge Ventures

David Brindley, Research Fellow , Harvard University of Oxford


TOO BAD that i MUST be in Moscow that and other days but my soul and thoughts will be there...

And I promise that I'll try to help in the battel against aging as much as I can.

Big Data Science in Medicine 2014: Accelerating Longevity Research

The Oxford University Scientific Society Welcomes Deep Knowledge Ventures and the Biogerontology Research Foundation (BGRF) to jointly host Big Data Science in Medicine 2014. This event brings together leading lights from artificial intelligence, biomedical science and regenerative medicine for an evening of talks and discussion in Oxford with the ambition of accelerating research on ageing.

Speakers: Aubrey de Grey, Alex Zhavoronkov, Joao Pedro de Magalhaes,Avi Roy, Dmitry Kaminskiy, Riva-Melissa Tez and Geoffrey Furlonger

With support from: Oxford Transhumanism and Emerging Technologies,Synox, Heales: Healthy life extension society, International Longevity Alliance, Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford University), British Science Association Oxfordshire Branch, Aging Analytics Agency, SENS Foundation, InSilico Medicine, British Institute of Posthuman Studies, The Human Memome Project, and London Futurists

The event is free to attend, but places are limited. Register for free here:http://www.bigdatamed.org/

Angelico Ventures

Just want to share important information and help my frend - David Oreshin :

 

Dear friends! I am currently looking for an investor for Angelico Ventures www.angelicoventures.com as we are fully invested and would like to continue to follow our path to achieving our mission in making the world free of ageing and disease. If you share our mission and would like to help us but you can't invest we are grateful for any help with sales, marketing, PR, GR, HR, IR, media, programming, design, fundraising etc. We welcome new partners to join Angelico Ventures team for sweat equity and profit sharing.

As an alternative I am looking for a full time job with a large or well funded organization, start up, high net worth individual in any field of business that will allow me to make good money through achieving the company goals and objectives so one day I can come back to Angelico Ventures business and make the world free of ageing and disease.

David Yury Oreshin is the founder of the first in Russia and CIS life sciences investment bank, VC, PE company Angelico Ventures, co founder of Alvansa Limited - pharmaceutical holding backed by Gazprombank and UFG Private Equity, founder of Angelico Pharmaceuticals. CEO of the Russian subsidiary of CureLab Oncology.

Angelico Ventures is a venture capital investment company focused on cancer, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, ageing and other therapeutic areas worldwide.

Angelico Management Consulting brings the world’s leading management consulting practice in life sciences to life sciences companies and investors.

Angelico Investment Banking is focused on the development of the global life sciences industry by bringing together only the best life sciences companies and investors worldwide. Major deals include Gazprombank and UFG Private Equity $200M investment in Alvansa Limited, pharmaceutical holding focused on pharmaceutical industry consolidation in Russia. NauchTekhStroy Plus (joint venture subsidiary of Pharmstandard, Russia's leading domestic pharmaceutical company) $58M investment and strategic alliance deal with Affitech, world’s leading monoclonal antibody company focused on development of new cancer therapeutics.

Angelico Pharmaceuticals is focused on development, registration, sales and marketing of nutriceuticals, pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals that are safe and effective against major age related diseases such as cancer, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases and other diseases. The mission of Angelico Pharmaceuticals is to generate revenue to finance radical life extension by saving lives of people and improving the quality of life. All Angelico Pharmaceuticals products are focused on human life extension by preventing, treating and providing support to the patients during the treatment of major age related diseases.

Angelico Radical Life Extension is focused on ending ageing by fixing genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alterations, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient-sensing, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, and altered intracellular communication. Angelico Radical Life Extension is currently in R&D stage and is going to laser beam focus on one product for radical human life extension that will ve also active against certain types of cancers by the end of 2014. Angelico Radical Life Extension is planning to start animal trials of our first product for radical human life extension in 2015. After obtaining promising data from animal trials Angelico Radical Life Extension will apply for IND in USA and approval to conduct clinical trials in Russia. We plan to position our first product for radical human life extension on the pharmaceutical market as a cancer drug active against certain types of cancers with a highly positive side effect of radical life extension. This approach allows Angelico Radical Life Extension to develop our first product for radical human life extension using traditional approach to pre-clinical and clinical trials, registration, sales and marketing of a biopharmaceutical drug what is going to simplify product development, registration, market entry and growth.

To contact me please e-mail: y.oreshin@angelicoventures.com

You may also see on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/y.oreshin/posts/10204551238402545 

Google Calico

AbbVie and Calico Announce a Novel Collaboration to Accelerate the Discovery, Development, and Commercialization of New Therapies

Calico to create a leading R&D facility in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on aging and age-related diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer

AbbVie and Calico may co-invest up to $1.5 billion, utilizing Calico’s discovery and early development capabilities and AbbVie’s broad research, development, and commercial expertise to advance innovative new therapies

NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. and SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Sept. 3, 2014 –AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) and Calico announced a novel R&D collaboration intended to help the two companies discover, develop and bring to market new therapies for patients with age-related diseases, including for neurodegeneration and cancer.

Calico is the Google-backed life sciences company led by Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D. (former chairman and CEO of Genentech) and Hal V. Barron, M.D. (former Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Genentech). The agreement paves the way for Calico to establish a world-class research and development facility in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Under the agreement, the companies will combine their complementary strengths to accelerate the availability of new therapies for age-related diseases:

• Calico will use its scientific expertise to establish a world-class research and development facility, with a focus on drug discovery and early drug development; and
• AbbVie will provide scientific and clinical development support and its commercial expertise to bring new discoveries to market.

“This collaboration demonstrates our commitment to exploring new areas of medicine and innovative approaches to drug discovery and development that augments our already robust pipeline,” said Richard A. Gonzalez, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, AbbVie. “We are pleased to be working with such outstanding scientists as Art Levinson, Hal Barron and their team. The potential to help improve patients’ lives with new therapies is enormous.”

“Our relationship with AbbVie is a pivotal event for Calico, whose mission is to develop life-enhancing therapies for people with age-related diseases. It will greatly accelerate our efforts to understand the science of aging, advance our clinical work, and help bring important therapies to patients everywhere,” said Art Levinson, CEO and founder of Calico.

Details of the Research Collaboration

• AbbVie and Calico will each initially provide up to $250 million to fund the collaboration with the potential for both sides to contribute an additional $500 million
• Calico will be responsible for research and early development during the first five years and continue to advance collaboration projects through Phase 2a for a ten-year period
• AbbVie will support Calico in its early R&D efforts and, following completion of Phase 2a studies, activities
• Both parties will share costs and profits equally

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with the many outstanding scientists at AbbVie to ensure that the important science at Calico is advanced quickly to benefit patients,” said Hal Barron, M.D., President of Research and Development at Calico.

"We are extremely proud to have our research teams partnering with Calico as we aim to address treatments for diseases of aging,” said Michael Severino, M.D., Executive Vice President, Research and Development, and Chief Scientific Officer, AbbVie. "Our broad R&D experience and capabilities will complement Calico's biotechnology expertise and innovative scientific approaches. Together, we are confident that we will bring new therapeutic solutions to patients."

Calico expects to begin filling critical positions immediately, and plans to establish a substantial team of scientists and research staff in the San Francisco Bay Area.

About AbbVie

AbbVie is a global, research-based biopharmaceutical company formed in 2013 following separation from Abbott Laboratories. The company's mission is to use its expertise, dedicated people and unique approach to innovation to develop and market advanced therapies that address some of the world's most complex and serious diseases. AbbVie employs approximately 25,000 people worldwide and markets medicines in more than 170 countries. For further information on the company and its people, portfolio and commitments, please visit www.abbvie.com. Follow@abbvie on Twitter or view careers on our Facebook or LinkedIn page.

About Calico

Calico (California Life Sciences LLC) is a Google-founded research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan. We will use that knowledge to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. Visit www.calicolabs.com.

InSilico Medicine salutes Calico and AbbVie partnership, paves way for Basel conference

The recently formed R&D partnership between Calico and AbbVie paves a pathway for aging research as the new industry, with more details at the MipTec 2014 conference in Switzerland

Aging research has long been regarded by the pharmaceutical industry as a subject of controversy associated with failed expectations, ineffective remedies, and blatantly false claims. However, the explosion of the research and clinical data, fueled by the drop in sequencing costs and technology convergence, has led to the emergence of projects with credible business models and approaches targeting both the age-related diseases as well as the aging-associated processes. Advances in aging biomarkers and in silico drug screening methods may soon enable the pharmaceutical industry to revisit their business models and reshape the regulatory frameworks.AbbVie and Google-backed Calico announced yesterday that they will co-invest up to $1.5 billion to create a leading R&D facility focused on aging and age-related diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer. This center will be located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the amalgamation of the two companies serves as a trailblazer for similar research teams dedicated to eradicating aging and age-related diseases.

InSilico Medicine, Inc. is thrilled about this new collaboration and its innovative potential. "InSilico Medicine, Inc. has developed several methods for geroprotector and geroprotector combination discovery and screening that are undergoing pre-clinical validation with multiple publications out, in review, and in the pipeline. We must thank Google for paving the way and setting the trend. After they got involved in this field, it gained a lot of credibility. In our opinion it is not a competitor, it is a bulldozer, which will pave the way for the many innovative companies like us." InSilico Medicine CEO, Alex Zhavoronkov, says. "We salute Calico and AbbVie for spearheading the revolution in aging drug discovery and setting the example for other pharmaceutical companies to follow. These are fantastic news for InSilico Medicine, Inc., Human Longevity, Inc., Retrotope, Pathway Pharmaceuticals and many other companies pursuing age-related diseases and aging itself."

With the MipTec 2014 conference in such close proximity to this notable collaboration, there is a great deal excitement for the experts, industries, and enthusiasts of aging therapies. The conference will host exceptional speakers, elaborate forums, and a variety of sponsors and exhibitors all dedicated to practical applications of aging. The conference serves as a bridge for scientists and the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to discover the potential for drug screening and discovery platforms for age-related disease. As more companies such as Calico and AbbVie continue to enter the field of aging research, forums like MipTec will increase in popularity and unite partners from a large variety of organizations on an international scale.

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More information on MipTec 2014 can be found at http://www.agingpharma.org/.

About InSilico Medicine

InSilico Medicine was founded in early 2014 and has since developed the GeroScopeTM geroprotector scrreening platform and extended the use of exclusively licensed OncoFinder™ system into drug discovery and research. It is a company dedicated to finding novel solutions towards aging and age-related diseases using advances in genomics and big data analysis. Through internal expertise and extensive collaborations with brilliant scientists, institutions, and highly credible pharmaceutical companies, InSilico Medicine seeks to revolutionize personalized science and drug discovery. More can be read about InSilico Medicine, Inc. at http://www.insilicomedicine.com.