Meridian Drug Discovery is a bi-annual event series from Continuum Globe Ltd. A platform for scientific knowledge sharing and a business incubator for vendor-sponsor meetings. MDD helps in networking, knowledge sharing, and partner outreach.
Our team partners with leading research institutions, private pharma-biotechs, and contract research organizations to publish the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs.
Meridian Drug Discovery helps companies improve their study design and overall strategy for hit discovery, validation, and research. For the 5th Meridian Drug Discovery, we have centralized our scientific approach to Artificial Intelligence, AI-driven drug design, drug safety, advanced lead selection, and more.
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President
Afreen Allam a recent MBA graduate of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, has over 7 years of research in nanomedicine. Her background is in Microbiology and Biochemistry.
Her extensive studies on applications of carbon nanotechnology in drug delivery and bio-imaging led to the patent of the Carbon Dot in 2013.
Sr. Director, Computational Biology and Data Sciences
Two decades of pharmaceutical industry experience in translational and discovery research across multiple therapeutic areas (Oncology, Immunology, Metabolic Diseases, and Neuroscience)
Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder
Dr Shane Hegarty graduated as the top ranked student of Neuroscience BSc with a 1st Class Hons from UCC in 2010, having been awarded the distinction of ‘College Scholar’ in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, and the ‘Certificate of Excellence’ in 2010 for academic excellence.
In 2010, he was awarded the prestigious ‘IRCSET EMBARK Postgraduate Scholarship’ by Irish Research Council (IRC) to carry out his proposed PhD project in Dept. Anatomy & Neuroscience, UCC, under the supervision of Professor Aideen Sullivan & Dr Gerard O’Keeffe. He was awarded the highly competitive ‘Government of Ireland Post-Doctoral Fellowship’ by the IRC in 2014, and the ‘NUI Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Sciences by the National University of Ireland in 2015, to facilitate his Post-Doctoral research in the Dept. of Anatomy and Neuroscience, UCC, which built on his PhD work.
As a researcher, he has been awarded places on international training courses, travel bursaries and ‘best presentation’ at a number of conferences. He has published 28 peer-reviewed journal articles (19 first author; 4 senior authors) to date, which have generated >1000 citations and an ‘h-index’ of 15. In 2015 he was awarded IRC ‘New Foundation Award’ to launch the ongoing ‘BRAINTALK’ outreach project. He was awarded the prestigious ‘Charlemont Grant’ in 2016 from Royal Irish Academy to extend his research in Prof. Danny Huylebroeck’s laboratory in Erasmus MC, Netherlands and KU Leuven, Belgium. In August 2016, he was appointed as a full-time Lecturer in the Dept. of Anatomy & Neuroscience, UCC. In September 2016
Shane was awarded the prestigious Neuroscience Ireland Early Career Investigator Award’ which recognises ‘outstanding Neuroscience research’. In August 2017, Dr Hegarty began his employment as a Research Fellow in the laboratory of Professor Zhigang He, in the Dept. of Neurology, Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard. In Sept. 2018, he became an Adjunct Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology. In January 2020, as a principal investigator he was granted a ‘William Randolph Hearst Fund Award’ for 2020 by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in recognition of, and to progress, his research work in HMS/BCH. In Jan. 2021
Shane joined Harvard i-Labs and President’s Innovation Challenge to spin out these recent discoveries. In April 2021, Dr Hegarty became Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of AXONIS Therapeutics, to pursue his lifelong mission of developing new therapies for neurological disorders.
CEO
Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD is a medical oncologist, tumor biologist, educator and executive with professional experience in academic, philanthropic and private sectors. She is the CEO of OncoSpherix, a preclinical stage cancer drug development company that is advancing a first-in-class family of small molecules that block the ability of cancer cells to adapt and spread from regions of low oxygen that results from growing faster than the blood supply.
Dr. Offermann previously served as Managing Partner of the Salutramed Group (a boutique C-level consulting group), Deputy National Vice President for Research at the American Cancer Society and Professor of Hematology and Oncology at Emory University, where she served as co-director of the MD, PhD training program, Associate Director of the Postgraduate Training Program in Hematology and Oncology and Associate Director of the Winship Cancer Institute.
She has served in executive roles with numerous non-profit organizations, including serving as President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), a federation of 30 non-profit research societies with over 130,000 members that advances biological science through collaborative advocacy for research policies that promote scientific progress and education.
President & CEO
Tauseef Butt obtained his BS/MS from University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland. He has a PhD in Mol Biology from the University of Glasgow, Glasgow Scotland. UK, He was a Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, before joining SmithKline (now GSK) Pharmaceuticals.
His group was responsible for several therapeutic areas during his 14 years in the SmithKline organization, where he led one of the first ubiquitin drug discovery efforts in the industry. Tauseef Butt was an Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, from 1989-to 2000. He is an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, Philadelphia PA. He is active in a number of national and regional biotechnology organizations.
Tauseef But is a co- founder of Progenra, Inc. He has raised over $100 million in capital over the last few years. Progenra Inc is dedicated to the discovery and development of innovative medicines by exploiting the ubiquitin-proteasome systems and PROTAC drugs. Currently, he is the CEO of Progenra. Dr Butt is also the co-founder of Abzyme Inc. a biotech company exploiting novel molecular evolutionary platforms to generate novel therapeutic antibodies.
Co-Founder and CEO
Dr. Witowski is an accomplished chemist with 15 years experience in drug discovery and formulation. As an early employee of AltMed (now CSE:$VRNO), he helped build vertically-integrated cannabis operations with management of product development, commercialization, and $100 million annual manufacturing. Intellectual property was captured in the form of patents on THC and CBD infused transdermal gels, patches, nebulizers, inhalers, and oral micellar delivery systems.
In 2019 Dr Witowski co-founded Psilera, a leading biotechnology company specializing in the clinical development of next-generation CNS drugs to target mood and addiction disorders. Psilera has a robust pipeline containing non-invasive formulations of the endogenous psychedelic DMT which can have optimized clinical and out-patient use. Our expansive drug library of new chemical entities (NCEs) was selected by BRAIN, an advanced computational platform, to identify NCEs with optimized side effect profiles and targeted therapeutic effects. Psilera leverages its research strengths and pharmaceutical background to repurpose psychoactive natural products as building blocks for next-generation therapies to improve mental health.
The future of human health will become more personalized which is further evidenced by the reemergence of cannabis and psychedelic therapies. I have personally witnessed the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease and depression first-hand and have made the discovery of therapeutics to improve mental health my mission.
Sr VP Preclinical Discovery & Chief Technology Officer
Experienced Pharmaceutical Professional with cross functional experience. Team leader with ability to build nascent target validation , drug discovery and development programs. Team builder with unique ability to enagage human talent.
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Xia has more than 30 years of experience in the research and development of therapeutic antibodies, from early validation through pre-clinical development. His previous positions include Head of Biotherapeutics at Moderna, where he focused on the discovery of immuno-oncology, autoimmune, and infectious disease therapeutics, Director at Synageva BioPharma, where he was responsible for early biologics discovery in rare and orphan diseases, and Pfizer, where he served in a variety of scientific roles, leading teams in immuno-oncology target identification and validation and bi- and multi-specific antibody design and development.
He has also served as an Instructor at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, having completed a post-doctoral fellowship in immunology at Harvard Medical School following receipt of his PhD in Immunology and Molecular Biology from the University of Kentucky. His efforts have been recognized globally, receiving the NIH National Research Service Award in 1994, an AAPS award (New York) in 2001, and having been named an Outstanding Alumnus of China Pharmaceutical University in 2016.
Our stage is open for companies to present their case studies, research, and new technological, scientific, or business breakthroughs. Research that helps to bring new cures or anything that reduces the cost or timeline in bringing that cure to the public.
Our speaking faculty is hand-picked from leading pharma-biotech, CRO, Regulatory, Research Institutes, & governmental organizations.
We keep a healthy and relevant attendee to maintain the quality and Sponsor-CRO ratio in balance.
It’s our way to give back to the industry, our business meetings help Pharma-Biotech to find new vendors, investors, & strategic partners.
Our poster presentations serve as a window for attendees to look at the latest breakthroughs of the company in a quick and organized manner in a few minutes.
Networking is our main priority, the default and organic way to connect with people of interest.
Strategies for building a sustainable drug discovery infrastructure
9:00 - 9:25 AMAI-enhanced Drug Design & Development: towards a Computational Precision Medicine
9:25 - 9:50 AMReserved for Sponsor Presentation
9:50 - 10:15 AMFragment-Based Drug Design: Advancing Tools and Technologies
10:15 - 10:40 AMPhenotypic Screening in Drug Discovery and High Content Screening Tools
11:10 - 11:35 AMImportance of Data Centricity
11:35 - 12:05 PMADCs: a New Class of Drugs Designed as a Targeted Therapy for Cancer
12:05 - 12:30 PMAccelerating Drug Discovery Research using High-Content Screening Technology
12:30 - 12:55 PMDrug Repurposing (DR): An Emerging Approach in Drug Discovery
12:55 - 01:20 PMReserved for Sponsor Presentation
02:20 - 02:45 PMData Visualization to accelerate biological discovery
02:45 - 03:10 PMAdvanced Bioinformatics Techniques for Biologics Drug Discovery
03:10 - 03:35 PMPredicting Drug Toxicity
03:35 - 04:00 PMIsotopic Labeling of Metabolites in Drug Discovery applications
04:30 - 04:55 PMDrug Discovery of New Modalities: Lead Optimization of Peptides and Oligonucleotides
9:00 - 9:25 AMThe Importance of Collaborative Business Models for Drug Development
9:25 - 9:50 AMReserved for Sponsor Presentation
9:50 - 10:15 AMTargets, translation & risk: Conceptual Framework for Drug Discovery Decision Making
10:15 - 10:40 AMHarnessing DNA Encoded Libraries
11:10 - 11:35 AMImportance of Animal Models & emerging alternatives
11:35 - 12:05 PMThe Organ-On-A-Chip platform for disease modelling and therapeutic screening
12:05 - 12:30 PMRNA optimization is a powerful tool for drug discovery
12:30 - 12:55 PMBenefits, limitations, and diversity of AI models in Drug and Target Discovery
12:55 - 01:20 PMReserved for Sponsor Presentation
02:20 - 02:45 PMBiomarkers in DD and development: from target identification through drug marketing
02:45 - 03:10 PMChallenges and opportunities for collaboration and Data sharing
03:10 - 03:35 PMNovel approaches for cell & gene therapy – Evolution or Revolution
03:35 - 04:00 PMIncreasing efficacy in target identification and validation
04:30 - 04:55 PMAn exclusive audience from growth stage pharma-biotech companies
Maximize ROI for time and investment; we Deliver what we Commit
Experienced executives providing a Premium Experience
Well researched and implementable Knowledge shared by Industry Leaders
Choose your favorite pass for the event.
This list Represents Previous and Current Sponsors.
These are three top picks from our side, check the full list here:
If you have any questions about the event, please contact us directly. We will respond for sure.
