Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Third Annual Anti-inflammatories: Small Molecules Meeting, April 17th – 18th 2012, San Diego, USA

Abstract

The Third Annual Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI) sponsored meeting of Anti-inflammatories: Small Molecules was held in San Diego from the 17th to the 18th of April 2012. It comprised of approximately 70 attendees from both large and small pharma and academic institutes from around the world. The meeting drew on the wide ranging application of targeting drugs which have anti-inflammatory activity and which modulate the immune response in a number of human diseases. These included rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and asthma, multiple sclerosis (MS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and multiple myeloma (MM). Data was presented supporting all stages of drug discovery from target identification and validation through to lead identification and optimization and both early and late stage clinical development. A keynote address by Paul Garside (Institute of Infection, Immunology and Inflammation, University of Glasgow) was devoted to investigating components of immune response biology in real time in vivo and the potential of this rapidly developing field to dissect biological mechanism at a cellular level. This report contains selected highlights from the meeting and concludes with some perspectives on the challenges and opportunities facing drug discovery and development.