Science Pool

Date: 20th - 22nd October 2021

Location: Pisa, Italy (Officine Garibaldi) 

Attendees: Manuela Medelin 

BraYn stands for “Brainstorming Research Assembly for Young Neuroscientists”. It is an initiative which aims to create a congress specifically intended for young researchers under the age of 40 working in the field of Neuroscience. 

Learn more about the 2021 BraYn conference

The challenge of neurodegenerative diseases

In the context of an aging population, neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson´s disease or Alzheimer´s disease have become a major health problem in Western countries.
The global market size for neurodegenerative diseases drugs was estimated at USD 35 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach USD 63 billion by the end of 2026, exhibiting a CAGR of 7.2% (source: Fortune Business Insights).

Developing treatments for neurodegenerative diseases comes with a number of challenges: The underlying causes, diseases mechanisms and progression of disorders affecting the central nervous system have not yet been fully understood. This results in much higher drug failure rates as compared to other fields, making the development of novel therapeutics for neurodegenerative disease very time and cost intensive. Approved drugs only offer short-term improvement of the patients’ symptoms, so there is a huge unmet medical need for innovative therapies that slow down or ideally revert disease progression.

New treatment approaches urgently needed

In response to the high attrition rates, R&D efforts to unveil the mechanism of neurodegenerative diseases have gained increasing attention. Evotec has a strong commitment to developing novel therapeutic options in neurodegeneration for more than a decade. In our long-standing collaboration with Celgene (now Bristol Myers Squibb) we have set out to establish human induced pluripotent stem cell-based disease models to discover novel disease-modifying treatments for a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases.

What are induced pluripotent stem cells?
Induced pluripotent stem cells (also known as iPS cells or iPSCs) are a type of pluripotent stem cell that can be generated directly from the patient’s somatic cells through reprogramming. They can be propagated indefinitely and give rise to almost every cell type in the body (such as neurons, heart, pancreatic and liver cells) thereby presenting unprecedented opportunities to model human disease pathology.

Over the past decade, Evotec has built an industrialised iPSC infrastructure that represents one of the largest and most sophisticated iPSC platforms in the industry. It comprises multiple different cell types to investigate disease-relevant phenotypes, translatable biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Evotec’s iPSC platform has continuously been optimized for increased throughput, reproducibility and robustness to provide large-scale cultures of iPSC derived cells for disease modeling, drug discovery and cell therapy. Moreover, it is closely connected with our PanOmics and PanHunter platforms to determine molecular disease signatures that may aid in stratification of patients and clinical trial success.

Evotec’s iPSC platform has been developed in collaboration with top-tier academic and industrial partners such as the CHDI Foundation, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Centogene, CENSO Biotechnologies (now Axol Bioscience), Fraunhofer IME-SP, Reprocell, Pancella, the University of Tübingen – and more recently - Sartorius and Curexsys. The Company´s goal is to build a proprietary pipeline of first-in-class therapeutic agents for a broad range of different diseases with high medical need, including neurodegenerative disorders, to ultimately extend and improve the lives of millions of patients and their families worldwide.

READ ABOUT OUR IPSC CAPABILITIES
READ ABOUT OUR BMS COLLABORATION

Mutant huntingtin (mHTT) protein has been implicated in neuronal degeneration in Huntington's Disease.

In this publication, we focus on:

• a background to the inherited neurodegenerative disorder, Huntington's Disease, including the impact of the mutant huntingtin (mHTT) gene
• a discussion of the use of positron emission tomography (PET) to monitor disease progression
• the identification of a novel ligand CHDI-626 which binds to mHTT aggregates

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Mutant huntingtin (mHTT) forms protein aggregates characteristic of Huntington's Disease pathology.

In this publication, we focus on:

• a background to Huntington's Disease including the mutant huntingtin gene (mHTT)
• a discussion of the benefits of sensitive biomarkers to monitor disease progression
• the discovery of an mHTT aggregate-specific PET ligand suitable for live brain imaging

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Huntington's Disease is caused a mutation in the huntingtin (mHTT) gene which codes for the huntingtin (HTT) protein.

In this publication, we focus on:

• a background to link between Huntington's Disease and the mutant huntingtin gene (mHTT)
• the development of PET tracers for imaging mHTT aggregates
• characterisation of these PET tracers including pharmacological investigation of their binding affinities and selectivity

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Date: 30th November - 1st December 2021

Location: Circle Square, Oxford Road, Manchester

Attendee: Oksana Nikolayenko

Learn more about ELRIG Pharmaceutical Flow Cytometry & Imaging 2021

Date: 30th November - 02nd December 2021

Location: Loews Coronado Bay Resort, San Diego

Attendee: David Cerny

Learn more about World Antiviral Congress 2021

Learn more about human pharmacokinetic prediction including:

• background information on the predictive model
• in vitro ADME data and structural data requirements for PK prediction
• data delivered for the PK prediction
• validation data for the predictive model

The Hollow Fibre Infection Model (HFIM) is a dynamic in vitro system for the determination of  PK/PD relationships between antimicrobial compounds and bacteria, fungi or viruses.

Evotec has developed its own dedicated state-of-the-art BSL2 facility offering it partners a bespoke in vitro PK/PD service tailored to advance their individual antimicrobial development programs.

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Date: 10^th – 12^th November 2021

Location: Jacob K. Javits Convention Centre, New York City

Booth Number: Level 1, Booth 941

Attendee: Ralf Geiben Lynn

Learn more about New York Society of Cosmetics Chemists Suppliers' Day 2021