Dr. David Kaslow, Merck to give Keynote presentation at 3rd Modern Drug Discovery & Development

PRLog (Press Release) – Oct 18, 2007 – MONROVIA, CA – Dr. David Kaslow, Vice President of Infectious Diseases and Vaccines at Merck & Company will give the Keynote presentation at GTCbio’s Biological Therapeutics conference – one of six tracks at the 3rd Modern Drug Discovery & Development Summit on November 28-30, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport.

Dr. Kaslow’s presentation will cover the progress toward a multi-dimensional approach to infectious diseases product development by integrating diagnostics, drugs, and biologics. Historically, anti-infectives and biologics (antibodies and vaccines), in addition to general public health measures, have had an immense impact on alleviating the healthcare burden due to infectious diseases. With perhaps a few exceptions (e.g., Variola), however, each new specific therapeutic advance has been ultimately met by some counter-response from the microbial world. Given those conditions, it should come as no surprise that although a single dimensional therapeutic approach may provide a near-term gain, such an approach wills an unlikely result in a durable effective intervention. A multi-dimensional approach, which may include diagnostics, drugs and biologics, to prevent and/or treat infections by these evolving microbial pathogens may be necessary to add new products with real, long-lasting value to our armamentarium. Building an integrated approach by appropriately incorporating new diagnostics and integrating multiple interventional modalities may provide a more valuable and sustainable next generation of products. Examples of such approaches will be presented.

The 3rd Modern Drug Discovery & Development Summit features over 150 speakers participating in 6 concurrent conferences, 6 study sessions and 3 pre-conference workshops. Tracks include Biological Therapeutics, Drug Delivery Technology, Translational Medicine, Drug Design and Lead Optimization, Emerging Targets, and Pharmaco – Kinetics, Dynamics, Genomics and Genetics. For more information, visit www.gtcbio.com.