RNA Therapeutics - Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, Thursday, 4 - Friday, 5 March, 2010
Workshop sponsored by Harvard Medical School - Portugal Program and European Network of Excellence on Alternative Splicing, EURASNET
Meeting organization: Francisco Enguita and Maria Carmo-Fonseca, Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
RNA molecules have been already proven to be a key target for disease therapy as well as a tool for the development of new drugs. Since the discovery of small non-coding RNAs and all the associated phenomena like RNA interference, the possibility of using RNA-based drugs has become a subject of great interest in the pharmaceutical and clinical fields. RNA is at the core of many cellular processes and might become an outstanding landmark in the way how we will fight disease in the future.
This Workshop will join together specialists in the clinical area and in the basic experimental research within the field in a pleasant atmosphere to discuss the forthcoming and present goals of RNA therapeutics. State of the art technologies and applications of RNA molecules as drugs or targets for therapeutics will be presented by prestigious invited speakers. Topics will range from targeted delivery of RNA molecules to applications of RNAi technology, miRNAs and their antagonists, use of therapeutic aptamers, and splice-switching strategies.
The Workshop is intended for a wide audience of biomedical scientists from academia as well as industry. Students and post-docs enrolled in MD/PhD or translational research programs are particularly welcome.
We invite all those interested to participate. There is no registration fee and entrance to the 2 day Workshop and coffee break/lunch on 5th March is free of charge. However, to assist us with numbers we would appreciate it if you could register your intention to attend the Workshop as well as the coffee break and lunch on 5th March by sending an email to patrodrigues@hmsportugal.org
For more information, or for assistance concerning accommodation in Lisboa, please contact patrodrigues@hmsportugal.org
PROGRAM:
Thursday, 4 March 2010
FROM 15h30 Check in
16H00 Welcome
16H10 - 16H40 Gert Jan Van Ommen (Leiden, The Netherlands)
Theme: Skipping around: RNA based therapy development for DMD, HD and other
interesting targets
16H40 - 17H10 Adrian Krainer (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA)
Theme: Antisense correction of SMN2 splicing in the CNS for SMA therapy
17H10 - 17H40 Mariano Garcia-Blanco (Duke Univeristy Medical Center, USA)
Theme: Host factors of pathogenic flaviviruses: potential therapeutic targets
17H40 - 18H10 Jamal Tazi (Institute of Molecular Genetics, Montpellier, France)
Theme: Premature aging: from splicing mechanism of the LMNA gene to validation of
a therapeutic approach on HGPS mouse model
Friday, 5 March 2010
09H00 - 09H30 Tony de Fougerolles (Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, USA)
Theme: Development of RNAi Therapeutics
09H30 - 10H00 Haezel Pinheiro (Exiqon, Vedbaek, Denmark)
Theme: microRNA signatures for colon cancer & mircoRNA analysis in clinical
formalin fixed tissue samples and human blood plasma samples
10H00 - 10H30 Troels Koch (Santaris Pharma, Hoersholm, Denmark)
Theme: Locked Nucleic Acid Enables efficient silencing of coding and non-coding
RNA
10H30 - 11H00 COFFEE BREAK
11H00 - 11H30 Jörg Kaufmann (Silence Therapeutics, Berlin, Germany)
Theme: Development of the AtuPLEX for RNAi-based therapies in oncology
11H30 - 12H00 Michael P. Czech (Program in Molecular Medicine, University of Massachusetts
Medical School, USA)
Theme: RNAi-based therapeutic strategies for inflammation and metabolic disease
12H00 - 12H30 Sarah Fredriksson (GENOVIS, Lund, Sweden)
Theme: Delivery of small RNAs in vitro and in vivo is a challenge and an interesting
driver of novel technologies
12H30 - 14H00 LUNCH
14H00 - 14H30 Michael G. Kaplitt (Neurologix, New York, USA)
Theme: AAV-Mediated RNAi Gene Therapy for Neurological Disorders
14H30 - 15H00 Sven Klussmann (NOXXON Pharma, Berlin, Germany)
Theme: Pushing Mirror-Image RNA Oligonucleotides into Clinical Studies
15H00 - 15H30 Ryszard Kole (AVI BioPharma, Bothell, WA, USA)
Theme: Splicing modulation by oligonucleotides. From concept to clinical trials
15H30 - 16H00 Gerard J. McGarrity (VIRxSYS, Gaithersburg, MD, USA)
Theme: In vivo production of therapeutic proteins by spliceosome-mediated RNA
trans-splicing