Monday, March 25, 2019 - Today Insilico Medicine, a biotechnology company developing the end-to-end drug discovery pipeline utilizing the next generation artificial intelligence, and the Scheibye-Knudsen Lab, University of Copenhagen, announce the presentation of Anne Bertolotti, Ph.D., FMedSci., Neurobiology Division MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, at the 6th Aging Research, Drug Discovery, and AI Forumduring the Basel Life Congress, September 10-12, 2019, Basel, Switzerland.
Dr. Anne Bertolotti will give a talk titled "Power and benefit of selective phosphatase inhibition for neurodegenerative diseases" presenting approaches aimed at helping cells to survive protein quality control failures, which can be useful to prevent protein misfolding diseases, including the devastating neurodegenerative diseases.
The deposition of misfolded proteins is a defining feature of many age-dependent human diseases, including the increasingly prevalent neurodegenerative diseases. Why misfolding-prone proteins accumulate in aged cells remains largely unclear. Cells normally strive to ensure that proteins get correctly folded and have powerful and sophisticated protein quality control mechanisms, to maintain protein homeostasis under adverse conditions. However, with age, the cellular defence systems against misfolded proteins gradually fail, leading to the accumulation of misfolded proteins with devastating consequences for cells and organisms.
In principle, improving the cells' ability to deal with misfolded proteins should represent a generic approach to reduce pathology in diverse protein misfolding diseases. The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology has identified powerful strategies to help cells survive when protein quality control fails, implementing some of these strategies in mice. Exploiting the current knowledge on protein quality control systems, a small drug-like molecule that safely boosts the natural defence system against misfolded proteins, has been identified.
"The small molecules we have identified selectively inhibit a regulatory subunit of a serine/threonine phosphatase controlling the termination of a proteostatic pathway, an interesting finding because phosphatases were previously thought to be undruggable. We have expanded on this idea and developed assays to selectively inhibit regulatory subunits of phosphatases. The assays are versatile and in principle, generically applicable to any phosphatases. This work has broad relevance because there are hundreds of phosphatases that could be inhibited using the same paradigm consisting of targeting their regulatory subunits. This opens up a broad range of possibilities to manipulate cellular function for therapeutic benefit," said Anne Bertolotti, FMedSci., Neurobiology Division MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
"Over the last 5 years, the "Aging & Drug Discovery" and "AI for Healthcare" forums have been leading events at BaselLife, attracting hundreds of delegates from over 50 countries. This year, we are combining the 2 platforms into a 3 day-event titled "the 6th Aging, AI and Drug Discovery Forum" to explore the convergence of these 2 cutting edge disciplines. Under the program leadership of Professor Morten Scheibye-Knudsen and Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, with distinguished scientists and industry experts in the field, we look forward to exploring breakthroughs for this great healthcare need for the planet," said Dr. Bhupinder Bhullar, Chair, Innovation Forum program committee, Basel Life 2019.
"We are delighted to announce the talk from Professor Anne Bertolotti, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge. Professor Bertolotti has vastly contributed to our mechanistic understanding of pathological protein aggregation in neurodegeneration. Particularly, her revolutionary discoveries revealing phosphatases as druggable targets may help in the future to find new pharmacological interventions for age-related human diseases. We are therefore extremely excited to welcome Professor Anne Bertolotti at the Aging, Drug Discovery and Artificial Intelligence meeting in Basel," said Dr. Daniela Bakula, University of Copenhagen.
"The 6th annual Aging Research, Drug Discovery, and AI Forum at Basel Life will have a fresh program featuring some of the most prominent scientists and industry players in aging and longevity research covering the theory, applications and convergence of these three exciting areas," said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., Founder, and CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc.
The 6th Aging Research for Drug Discovery Forum Basel will bring together leaders in the aging, longevity, and drug discovery field, to describe the latest progress in the molecular, cellular and organismal basis of aging and the search for interventions. Furthermore, the forum will include opinion leaders in AI to discuss the latest advances of this technology in the biopharmaceutical sector and how this can be applied to interventions. This event intends to bridge academic and commercial research and foster collaborations that will result in practical solutions to one of humanity's most challenging problems: aging. The Forum will be held in Basel, Switzerland, September 10-12, 2019.
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Contact: Ola Popova
Website: http://insilico.
About Insilico Medicine, Inc
Insilico Medicine is an artificial intelligence company headquartered in Rockville, with R&D and management resources in Belgium, Russia, UK, Taiwan, and Korea sourced through hackathons and competitions. The company and its scientists are dedicated to extending human productive longevity and transforming every step of the drug discovery and drug development process through excellence in biomarker discovery, drug development, digital medicine, and aging research.
Insilico pioneered the applications of the generative adversarial networks (GANs) and reinforcement learning for generation of novel molecular structures for the diseases with a known target and with no known targets. In addition to working collaborations with the large pharmaceutical companies, the company is pursuing internal drug discovery programs in cancer, dermatological diseases, fibrosis, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, ALS, diabetes, sarcopenia, and aging. Through a partnership with LifeExtension.com, the company launched a range of nutraceutical products compounded using the advanced bioinformatics techniques and deep learning approaches. It also provides a range of consumer-facing applications including Young.AI.
In 2017, NVIDIA selected Insilico Medicine as one of the Top 5 AI companies in its potential for social impact. In 2018, the company was named one of the global top 100 AI companies by CB Insights. In 2018 it received the Frost & Sullivan 2018 North American Artificial Intelligence for Aging Research and Drug Development Award accompanied with the industry brief. Brief company video: https:/
About Basel Life 2019
Aging Research for Drug Discovery Forum description
In this symposium, leaders in the aging, longevity, and drug discovery field will describe the latest progress in the molecular, cellular and organismal basis of aging and the search for interventions. Furthermore, the forum will include opinion leaders in AI to discuss the latest advances of this technology in the biopharmaceutical sector and how this can be applied to interventions. This event intends to bridge academic and commercial research and foster collaborations that will result in practical solutions to one of humanity's most challenging problems: aging. A panel of thought-leaders will give us their cutting edge reports on the latest progress in our quest to extend the healthy lifespan of everyone on the planet.
Conference Official Website: https:/
About LMB
The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a world-class research laboratory, dedicated to understanding important biological processes at the molecular level - with the goal of using this knowledge to tackle major problems in human health and disease.
The LMB is one of the birthplaces of modern molecular biology. Many techniques were pioneered at the laboratory, including DNA sequencing, methods for determining the three-dimensional structure of proteins and the development of monoclonal antibodies.
LMB official website: https:/
About the Scheibye-Knudsen Laboratory
The growing proportion of the elderly population represents an increasing socioeconomic challenge, not least because of age-associated diseases. It is therefore increasingly pertinent to find interventions for age-associated diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cardiovascular diseases. Although the cause of aging is currently unknown accumulation of damage to our genome, the DNA, may be a contributing factor.
In the Scheibye-Knudsen lab we try to understand the cellular and organismal consequences of DNA damage with the aim of developing interventions. We have discovered that DNA damage leads to changes in certain metabolites and that replenishment of these molecules may alter the rate of aging in model organisms. These findings suggest that normal aging and age-associated diseases may be malleable to similar interventions. The hope is to develop interventions that will allow everyone to live healthier, happier and more productive lives.
Laboratory website: http://scheibye-knudsen.
About the University of Copenhagen
With over 40,000 students and more than 9,000 employees, the University of Copenhagen is the largest institution of research and education in Denmark and among the highest ranked universities in Europe. The purpose of the University - to quote the University Statute - is to 'conduct research and provide further education to the highest academic level'. Approximately one hundred different institutes, departments, laboratories, centres, museums, etc., form the nucleus of the University.
University Website: http://introduction.
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