Glenn D. Prestwich to speak at 7th Modern Drug Discovery Summit Oct 19-21 2011 in San Diego, CA

Sept. 1, 2011 - PRLog -- Glenn D. Prestwich, Director of the Therapeutic Biomaterials Center, Special Presidential Assistant for Faculty Entrepreneurism and Presidential Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at
University of Utah, will give a plenary keynote presentation on “Engineering a Clinical Biomaterial for Regenerative Medicine: From Bench to Business” at the 7th Modern Drug Discovery and Development Summit to be held in San Diego, CA on October 19-21, 2011 by GTC.

Faculty entrepreneurism is a scholarly activity. Dr. Prestwich will describe how the University of Utah has implemented policies that encourage faculty and student entrepreneurial activities through the Entrepreneurial Faculty Scholars and the Young Entrepreneurial Student Scholars programs. He will also describe a case study for commercialization of a university technology in the area of regenerative medicine.

Dr. Prestwich will also discuss how they created a synthetic extracellular matrix (sECM) from hyaluronic acid (HA) that affords highly reproducible, manufacturable, approvable, and affordable biomaterials. The in situ crosslinkable sECM hydrogels can be customized for use with progenitor and mature cell populations obtained many tissues, including skin, fat, liver, heart, brain, muscle, bone, and cartilage. In addition, sECMs have been developed for rapid expansion and recovery of cells in 3-D, and for the bioprinting of engineered tissue constructs. The technology is being commercialized in three fields of use: human medical devices, cell therapy and research tools for 3-D cell culture, and veterinary wound care and adhesion prevention.

Dr. Glenn D. Prestwich’s passion for translational research and scholarship led to his appointment as director of the Entrepreneurial Faculty Scholars program at the U of Utah (2008 – current). He has launched over seven small life science companies in the last fifteen years: Clear Solutions Biotech (1994-2001); Echelon Biosciences, Inc. (CSO, 1997-2003); Sentrx Surgical, Inc. (CSO, 2003-2004); Carbylan BioSurgery, Inc. (Palo Alto, CA)(2004-current); Sentrx Animal Care, Inc. (Salt Lake City)(2005-current); Glycosan BioSystems, Inc. (Salt Lake City) (CSO, 2005-2011); GlycoMira, Inc. (CSO, Salt Lake City) (2008 - current); Metallosensors (CEO, 2011 – current). He is a Scientific Advisor for Novozymes, Elastin Specialities, ContraDyn, Organonovo, Brickell Biotech, and OrthoCyte/BioTime. He received the Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology for 2006, was awarded the 1998 Paul Dawson Biotechnology Award and the 2008 Volwiler Research Award of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. In 2010, he received the University of Utah Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Research Award, as well as the 2010 “Rooster Prize” of the International Society for Hyaluronan Science for outstanding contributions to hyaluronan-derived products.  During his 33 years as a faculty member, he has published over 600 technical papers, patents, and book chapters, and has trained over 125 postgraduate scientists. In 2011, he was invited to serve as a member of the editorial advisory board for Science Translational Medicine. His university research programs included (i) new reagents for lipid signaling in cell biology and cancer treatment, (ii) biomaterials for wound repair, cartilage repair, tissue engineering, scar-free healing, and toxicology and xenograft models, and (iii) sulfated glycosaminoglycan analogues as inflammation modulators for clinical use.

The 7th Modern Drug Discovery and Development Summit will bring researchers, lab directors/managers, and industry executives the critical scientific, technology, and business coverage that they need. M3D will offer an in-depth examination of the challenges involved in the dynamic and ever-changing field of drug discovery and development. Over 125 leading industrial and academic experts will present at this three-day summit and is comprised of a half day plenary keynote session and 4 full conferences. The M3D Summit includes the following conferences:

5th Biomarker Discovery and Development
5th Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry
5th Advances in Stem Cell Discovery and Development
4th Protein Discovery & Therapeutics

For more information, please visit www.gtcbio.com