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Sanofi-Institut Pasteur announces a 2012 Award Program for New Approaches to Drug Resistance

Sanofi and the Institut Pasteur have created the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Awards to encourage scientific excellence in the service of health. The institute will provide Euro 480 million to support four innovative research projects demonstrating real progress in the life sciences and providing answers to major healthcare problems, more specifically in four fields: neglected tropical diseases, vaccine innovation, drug resistance, and therapeutic approaches to ageing and regenerative medicine.

For more information follow this link

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IDR Co-Founders to host Gordon Research Conference on Drug Resistance in 2012

Margaret Riley, PhD, and Celia Schiffer, PhD will be hosting a new Gordon Research Conference on Drug Resistance July 29 - August 3, 2012 at Stonehill College in Easton, MA.  The conference provides a unique opportunity for  multidisciplinary exploration of similarities in drug resistance in rapidly evolving diseases.  A preliminary program is shown below.  Registration is now open at this link

Preliminary Program and Speakers

Session 1: The Drug Resistance Challenge: Setting the Stage

• Discussion Leader: John Coffin, PhD Professor, The Slacker School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, Tufts University,
• Marie-Pierre de Bethune, PhD Vice President for External Innovation, Tibotec

Session 2: Drug Resistance Evolution

• Discussion Leader: Bruce Levin, PhD. Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology, Emory University
• Leah Cowen, PhD Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics & Infectious Disease, University of Toronto
• Tim Clackson, PhD President of Research and Development, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Ariad
• Judith Berman, PhD Professor, Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development, Genetic Mechanisms of Cancer Program, University of Minnesota

Session 3: Drug Resistance Epidemiology

• Discussion Leader: Thomas O’Brien, MD Associate Professor of Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital
• Robert Shafer, MD Professor of Medicine - Infectious Diseases, Stanford University
• Cristian Tomasetti, PhD Research Fellow, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health

Session 4: Predicting Drug Resistance

• Discussion Leader: Dan Andersson, PhD, Professor, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University
• Sally Blower, PhD Professor and Director, The Center for Biomedical Modeling, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA  
• Michael M. Gottesman, PhD Head, Multidrug Resistance Section, National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research
• Amy Anderson, PhD Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Session 5: Limiting Resistance Emergence

• Discussion Leader: Jean Patel, PhD Deputy Director, Center for Disease Control Office of Antimicrobial Resistance
• Patrick Tranel PhD Professor, Molecular Weed Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Roy Kishony, PhD Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School

Session 6: Designing Drugs that Last

• Discussion Leader: David Spiegel PhD Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Yale University
• Andrew Greenstein, PhD Scientist, Gilead Sciences
• Arnold Edward, PhD Professor Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
• Robert Siliciano, PhD HHMI Investigator, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Session 7: Novel Drug Targets to Avoid Resistance

• Discussion Leader: Manuel Navia PhD Executive-in-Residence Oxford Bioscience Partners, Boston, MA
• Juswinder Singh, PhD Founder and CSO Avila Therapeutics, Inc.
• Diana Morales, PhD Post Doctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School

Session 8: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Tackling Drug Resistance, Part 1

• Discussion Leader: Jennifer Leeds, PhD Executive Director, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research
• Robert Dorit PhD Associate Professor of Biology, Smith College
• Ronald Swanstrom, PhD Professor Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of North Carolina
• Richard Slayden PhD Associate Professor and Associate Director, Center for Environmental Medicine, Colorado State University

Session 9: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Tackling Drug Resistance, Part 2

• Discussion Leader: Ray Schinazi, PhD Professor and Director, Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Emory University
• Susan Bates, PhD Head, Molecular Therapeutics Section and Senior Investigator, National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research
• Michael Miller, PhD Merck Infectious Disease, Antiviral - HIV Site Lead

IDR Spring Conference 2011 Summary Report

The IDR Spring Conference titled “Targeting Drug Resistance”  is available for download here.

Over 100 participants from academia, industry, policy development organizations and government assembled on May 16, 2011 to continue the cross disciplinary discussions and investigations into the parallels by which drug resistance arise in quickly evolving diseases.  Speakers included: Dr. Marie-Pierre de Bethune, Vice President of  External Innovation at Tibotec/Johnson & Johnson;  Stephen Becker, MD, Senior Program Officer, Infectious Diseases Development, Gates Foundation; Dr. Stephen Hughes, Director, HIV Drug Resistance Program, Chief, Retroviral Replication Laboratory; and Head, Vector Design and Replication Section, National Cancer Institute;  Dr. Nathanael Gray, Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School; Dr. Sarah Fortune, Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health; and Ms. Sharon Ladin, Director, Antibiotics and Innovation Project, The Pew Charitable Trusts. “Advocating for Policies that Prime the Antibiotics Pipeline.

Novel Malarial Research Funded

Dr. Pamela Weathers Professor of Biology and Biotechnology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and member of the Institute for Drug Resistance, and her colleague Dr. Douglas Goelenback Professor of Medicine - Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have been awarded a grant from the Center for Clinical and Translational Medicine at the University of Massachusetts for a pilot study entitled "A novel antimalarial strategy based on whole plant delivery of Artemisia annua L."  The grant will run for two years.

The IDR Launches an Information Newsletter for the Drug Resistance Community

On February 10, 2011 the IDR launched it's new newsletter.  With a focus on the needs of drug resistance researchers, the Newsletter also provides resources for those involved in policy issues as well.  See a copy of the Newsletter here, or subscribe using the link on the navigation bar on the left.

As always, the IDR seeks your feedback about how we can further assist the development of novel solutions to the challenge of drug resistance.  You can reach us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Recognition for the IDR!

The IDR was recognized as a "Best of the Web" by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News on February 1, 2011!  "The Institute for Drug Resistance’s website is an excellent resource for researchers" states the review.  See the full review here.

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Hold the Date for the Spring IDR Conference

The IDR will hold its second full day conference on May 16, 2011.  The conference will be open to researchers, clinicians, industry representatives, post-docs, residents and graduate students.  Mark your calendar and check back to see details of the conference soon.

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IDR Gordon Conference Proposal Accepted for 2012

The Institute for Drug Resistance’s proposal to Gordon Research Conferences on Drug Resistance has been accepted and scheduled for 2012!  The conference will be devoted to exploring the intriguing concept that drug resistance should be one of the primary criteria in drug design. Planning for the conference is underway . . . stay tuned for more information.

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AAM Approves IDR Symposium Proposal

The Institute for Drug Resistance’s proposal to the American Academy of Microbiology for a Colloquium titled “Designing drugs that last:  Incorporating the biology of drug resistance into drug design” has been accepted and will be held in the spring of 2012.  It has generally been overlooked that the propensity to evolve resistance to drugs is a critically important common feature of diseases that are different in almost every other way. But it is increasingly clear that close parallels can often be drawn between resistance seen in one disease state and resistance seen in another. Until now, the study of drug resistance has been very much a disease specific endeavor, with no systematic means for clinicians and researchers to share insights and resources that could benefit a wider community.

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Life Sciences Moment Award to IDR Co-founders

IDR Directors Dr. Peg Riley, Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Dr. Celia Schiffer, Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Pharmacy  at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have received an award from the Life Science Moment Fund of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science of the University of Massachusets.  The $150,000 award will support the project "Testing novel antimicrobials to treat chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in CF lung"