Pre-conference Workshop, Monday 24th May, 2010
Opportunities and challenges with antibody therapies for nervous systems disorders
Led by: Johan Luthman, Vice President, Neuroscience & Opthalmology R&D, Merck & Co.
Hervé Perron, Chief Scientific Officer, Geneuro
Timings: 09:30 - 10:00 Registration & Refreshments
10:00 - 15:00 Workshop
The purpose of the workshop is to allow you to engage in knowledge sharing with your peers in a smaller, less formal environment than the main conference. As such, the audience size will typically be no more than 20 participants in order to enable maximum interaction between the workshop leader and the delegates. The format is also more interactive, with less emphasis on ‘lecture-style’ presentations and more emphasis on group discussions, exercises and Q&A sessions.
There are several targets of high perceived value and reasonable target validation for nervous system disorders, which have high challenges in tractability for small molecule therapeutic approaches. Antibodies may present higher possibilities for success for finding therapeutics for those targets. At the same time PK and target organ distribution challenges with biologics present major obstacles for such therapeutics for nervous system disorders.
Lessons learned: An understanding on which indications and targets that are best suitable for antibody therapeutics for nervous systems disorders.
About your workshop leaders
Johan Luthman, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Johan Luthman is vice president and franchise integrator, Neuroscience & Ophthalmology R&D, at Merck Research Laboratories (MRL). In this role, he is responsible for overseeing late research and early development activities within the franchise, with an emphasis on the pathway to proof of concept trials, supported biomarkers. He coordinates various biomarker efforts for specific programs in the, Neuroscience & Ophthalmology project portfolio as well as leads platform activities to support the development of novel biomarkers and the refinement of current tools. Dr. Luthman joined Merck & Co Inc, in August 2009.
Dr. Luthman studied medicine and dentistry at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, continuing with postgraduate studies in neuroscience, leading to a Ph.D in neurobiology in 1989. Dr. Luthman worked thereafter as a research follow at the departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, University of Colorado, and as an associate professor at, Karolinska Institute. After practicing dentistry part-time, in parallel with his academic appointments, he began his career in the pharmaceutical industry in 1991.
In the Pharmaceutical Industry Dr. Luthman has held positions of increasing responsibility, eventually overseeing all neurodegenerative and immunology disease projects from target discovery to development, with a particular emphasis on reaching proof-of-concept trials. Dr. Luthman's primary research interest and R&D experience is in the area of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, peripheral neuropathies and stroke, with a focus on neuroinflammatory processes. Dr. Luthman received an honorary professorship in Pharmacology in 2002, from the University of Chile, Santiago.
Dr. Luthman first position in the Pharmaceutical industry was as a research scientist in Astra Arcus AB, where he later worked as both project and department director. After the formation of AstraZeneca Dr. Luthman worked as director Bioscience, followed by an appointment as Director Translational Science Neurology & Analgesia, a position in which he led efforts to further bridge preclinical and clinical functions, with an emphasis on identifying and developing technologies to support the implementation of novel approaches for evaluating efficacy and safety in early clinical trials. In 2005, he joined Serono Pharmaceuticals International SA in Geneva, as Head of Neuroscience & Immunology Research, and after the acquisition of Serono by Merck KGaA he became Global Head of the Therapy Area Neurology & Autoimmune and Inflammatory Diseases, and thereafter Head Exploratory Medicine Neurology in MerckSerono, a subsidiary of Merck KGaA.
He has extensively authored publications and presentations, as well as several book chapters, on topics including neurobiology, pharmacology, neurotoxicology and inflammation. Dr.Luthman serves on the editorial board of Neurotoxicity Research.
Merck, Sharp & Dohme
For further information, please visit: www.msd.com/nm/uk
Dr Hervé Perron
PhD in Virology: Retrovirology (1991) at the Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble-France and HDR (Professoral Thesis; 2001) in Neuroimmunology at the Faculty of Medicine, Grenoble-France. Presently Thesis Director at the “Doctoral School” of University Claude Bernard Lyon-1.
During his PhD thesis, he published the evidences of a retroviral element associated with MS for the first time in 1989 (Res Virol 140, 551-561) followed by a confirmatory study on patients and control series in 1991 (Lancet 337, 862-863).
Appointed from 1991 to 1998 as research scientist and, further, as research project manager in the CNRS-bioMérieux joint unit in Lyon, he has leaded the research and managed the project for the molecular characterisation of this novel retroviral element isolated from patients with Multiple Sclerosis, which resulted in the identification of genetic sequences of a novel retroviral genome (MSRV), itself defining a novel family of human endogenous elements (HERV-W). These discoveries were published successively in PNAS (1997), Virology (1999) and J. Virol. (1999).
From 1999 to 2001, he has been appointed as Scientific Director of bioMérieux STELHYS, a spin-off society dedicated to the evaluation of strategic developments from results of upstream research projects, within bioMérieux industrial group.
While pursuing research on the MSRV/HERV-W domain in partnership with the French Agency for Medical Research (INSERM), from 2001 to 2005, he has been appointed as R&D research director and senior manager of R&D programs on Neurological diseases within bioMérieux SA, targeting in vitro diagnosis of Prion infection in human and animal blood, early biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease in blood and CSF, Stroke blood biomarkers, and more generally biomarkers panels for the development of novel avenues introducing “In Vitro Diagnostics” (IVD) in the domain of Neurological diseases.
From 2006 to 2008 he left bioMérieux for the foundation of GeNeuro under ECLOSION auspices (Geneva, Switzerland), as Chief scientific officer of this company launching the first development of an innovative therapeutic product targeting an upstream pathogenic agonist in Multiple Sclerosis: a specific protein expressed by the MSRV/HERV-W retroviral element discovered during his PhD thesis.
He is now general manager of the newly created French subsidiary company, Geneuro-Innovation, and remains Chief Scientific Officer for the Geneuro Biotech company. He thus bridges “Research and Development” in Geneuro-Innovation with Pharmaceutical development for Clinical applications in Geneuro SA.
He is, and has been, referee for various scientific journals: AIDS Research and human retroviruses, Archives of General Psychiatry, Brain, CNS and drug therapy, Expert Review of Clinical Immunology, Genes and Immunity, Genomics, Journal of General virology, Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Journal of Medical virology, Journal of Neuroimmunology, Journal of Virology, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA), Trends in Microbiology, Virology, Annals of neurology, Analytical Chemistry, Journal of Virological Methods, Biological Psychiatry, etc.... He is or has been expert referee for different MS societies, Medical Research Foundations and Universities.
He is author of over 65 Peer-reviewed publications edited on Medline/PubMed, of more than 60 patents published and listed in esp@cenet, is author or co-author of about 900 nucleotide sequences and 150 protein/aminoacid sequences deposited in databases as listed in ENTREZ-Nucleotide or ENTREZ-Protein NCBI databases (Search for “Perron H” in databases).
GeNeuro SA
GeNeuro SA is the world leader in human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) associated disorders. Its primary focus is the treatment of neurological diseases. Its lead product, a monoclonal antibody targeting a HERV protein, will enter clinical trials on multiple sclerosis (MS) patients during Quarter 4 2010. By neutralizing a key factor in the inflammatory process without modifying the human immune system, GeNeuro’s antibody aims at stopping the progression of MS without the side effects experienced with existing MS drugs.
GeNeuro has a strong pipeline of other applications for its anti-HERV technology, protected by 28 families of patents. These include novel approaches to diseases with an inflammatory component, such as schizophrenia.