Robert Copeland to Speak at CHI’s Structure-Based Drug Design, June 6-8, Cambridge, MA

March 22, 2012 - PRLog -- Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI) & Bio-IT World today announces that Robert A. Copeland, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and CEO, Epizyme, Inc., has accepted CHI’s invitation to speak at its twelfth annual Structure-Based Drug Design conference to be held on June 6-8, 2012 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston in Cambridge, MA.  

Dr. Copeland’s presentation entitled “Drug-Target Residence Time: An Alternative Approach to Lead Optimization” is scheduled Friday, June 8 at 8:40-9:10 a.m. Durable pharmacologic activity depends not merely on the affinity of drug-target interactions but also on the lifetime of the drug-target complex in vivo. Residence time provides an experimental measure that related directly to the lifetime of the drug-target complex. The residence time concept will be introduced and examples of its application for improving lead efficacy and safety will be presented. Structural features that facilitate long drug-target residence time will be discussed in the context of a new theoretical framework for drug dissociation: the retrograde induced-fit model.

Dr. Copeland joined Epizyme in September, 2008, from GlaxoSmithKline, where he was Vice President, Biology, Oncology Center of Excellence in Drug Discovery. Dr. Copeland has served as Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and a Fellow of the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, on the Scientific Advisory Board of Sigma-Aldrich, on the American Chemical Society Committee for Professional Training and on the Governance Council of the ASBMB. He is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and a member of the Faculty of 1000. Before joining GSK Copeland held scientific staff positions at Merck Research Laboratories, DuPont Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb and a faculty position at the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine.

Dr. Copeland received his B.S. in chemistry from Seton Hall University, his doctorate in chemistry from Princeton University and did postdoctoral studies as the Chaim Weizmann Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. His research interest is in elucidating the determinants of drug recognition by their biological targets, and the use of this information in the discovery and design of new medicines. He has contributed to drug discovery and development efforts across a wide range of therapeutic areas leading to numerous drug candidates entering human clinical trials and the approval of Altabax (Retapamulin), a novel antibiotic. Dr. Copeland has contributed over 170 publications to the scientific literature, holds 8 issued U. S. patents and has authored 4 books in the areas of protein science and enzymology. His latest book, Evaluation of Enzyme Inhibitors in Drug Discovery: A Guide for Medicinal Chemists and Pharmacologists (Wiley, Hoboken, NJ), published in March 2005

For more details on this conference, visit http://www.healthtech.com/sbd

To inquire about sponsoring and/or exhibiting, contact Jon Stroup, 781-972-5483, jstroup@healthtech.com.

Writers and editors are encouraged to attend. To request a press pass, contact Tracey Fielding at tfielding@healthtech.com.

About Cambridge Healthtech Institute (www.chicorporate.com)

CHI is the preeminent life science network for leading researchers and business experts from top pharmaceutical, biotech and academic organizations. CHI’s portfolio of products includes Cambridge Healthtech Institute Conferences, Insight Pharma Reports, Cambridge Marketing Consultants, Barnett Educational Services, Cambridge Meeting Planners and CHI’s Media Group, which includes news websites and e-newsletters including Bio-IT World and eCliniqua. Founded in 1992, CHI strives to develop quality information sources that provide valuable new insights and competing points of view while offering balanced coverage of the latest developments.

Contact:

James Prudhomme
Cambridge Healthtech Institute
781-972-5400
jprudhomme@healthtech.com