E17-29: Intro to Drug Discovery/Development Process

 HALF-Day Course
Wednesday, November 15; 8:30am – 12:30pm

Dr. Michael W. Dong, MWD Consulting, Norwalk, CT

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This introductory half-day course provides a high-level overview of the entire drug development process for new therapeutics targeting human diseases, with a focus on the pivotal role of the analytical chemist in this complex, costly and multidisciplinary process.  It introduces the pharmaceutical (biopharm) industry (perspectives, challenges and trends), and discusses impacts from generic drugs.  Course attendees will learn the current drug discovery approach, from basic research on disease pathophysiology, identification of drug targets, turning of hits to leads and candidate for non-clinical and clinical development.  Regulatory filing procedures – Investigational New Drug (IND) prior to conducting human clinical trials and New Drug Application (NDA) allowing drug product commercialization will be discussed.  The role of the analytical chemist, in  supporting discovery, process scale-up, formulations, stability, DMPK, QC/QA, and regulatory affairs functions, will be described.  The focus of the course is on new drug discovery and development process of small molecule innovative drugs.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND 
This course will benefit scientists currently working in the biopharmaceutical industry who want to improve their understanding of the drug discovery /development process (including pharma trends and perspectives, drug discovery, pre-clinical and clinical development). This course is also useful for non-pharma scientists and managers seeking a better technical understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the industry.  A fundamental understanding of biology, chemistry or biochemistry is assumed.

TOPICS
1. Pharmaceutical Industry: Perspectives, Challenges and Trends
* Historical and regulatory background; industry perspectives, challenges and trends
     * Overview of current processes and approaches; case studies

2.  Drug Discovery Process: From Targets to Leads
* Overall approaches: phenotypical, molecular and genomic medicines
     * Target: identification / validation and lead ID / optimization 
     * ADME, DMPK, toxicology and animal models.

3. Non-Clinical and Clinical Development: From Development Candidate to IND and NDA 
     * Characterization of lead molecules, API process scale-up, pre-formulation, analytical chemistry, stability, development of clinical trial materials (CTM)
     * Analytical procedures for assessing and controlling drug quality (physicochemical properties, purity, ID, stability), COA, release testing, quality control, and specifications 
     * GLP tox studies, IND filing and case studies 
     * Clinical trials: Phase I, II, III and IV, and NDA

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Dr. Michael W. Dong is a principal consultant in MWD Consulting providing expert consulting and training services on HPLC/UHPLC, pharmaceutical analysis and drug quality.  He was formerly Senior Scientist in Analytical Chemistry and Quality Control at Genentech, Research Director at Synomics Pharma, Research Fellow at Purdue Pharma, and Senior Staff Scientist at Applied Biosystems / Perkin-Elmer.  He holds a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the City University of New York, and a certificate in Biotechnology from U. C. Santa Cruz. He has 100+ publications including a bestselling book on chromatography (Modern HPLC for Practicing Scientists). He is an editorial advisory board member of LCGC magazine, American Pharmaceutical Review and Chinese American Chromatography Association as well as a career consultant for American Chemical Society.  He is a columnist for LCGC North America since 2013.

Recommended text:
R. G. Hill and H.P. Rang (eds.), Drug Discovery and Development: Technology in Transition,  2nd edition, Churchill Livingston, 2012. ISBN 978-0-7020-4299-7.