| This fall the traditional McGill-CIHR Drug Development Training Program (DDTP) Annual Retreat expanded into the first annual International Drug Discovery and Development Forum. With the theme of "Inspiring Drug Discovery Successes," this forum marked the inaugural year of the RI-MUHC's state-of-the-art Drug Discovery Platform at the Glen site. It provided a week-long interface of activities for more than 170 attendees from the pharmaceutical industry and academia. This unique event attracted research trainees, academic mentors and pharmaceutical scientists from Canada, the US, Denmark and the UK, as well as commercial exhibitors from the US and Canada.
Enthusiastic about the outcome of this interactive week, Platform Director Dr. Bertrand Jean-Claude noted that "Forum 2015 has placed the launch of the Drug Discovery Platform in the modern context of targeted therapy, personalized medicine and the emergence of biologics as novel and potent therapeutic agents." Two days were devoted to training on drug discovery topics supported by the RI-MUHC's advanced drug discovery and microscopy imaging platforms. Three major symposia focused on the successful development of clinically effective therapeutics. A day was devoted to emerging successes by local pharmaceuticals and McGill researchers, with a presentation of the CTB Drug Discovery Platform. Students and postdoctoral fellows presented work in oral and poster sessions on days 3 and 4. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the carcinoembryonic antigen and the 25th anniversary of the McGill Department of Oncology, the DDTP awarded two inaugural prizes. Anna Tomberg (PhD student, Department of Chemistry) received the Phil Gold Discovery Prize from Dr. Gold in person. Zhor Mouhri Senhaji (PhD student, Department of Medicine) earned the new Oncology prize. |
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