C. Glenn Begley VP at Amgen to speak at Cancer Targets meeting, Feb 27-28, 2012, Las Vegas

Dec. 31, 2011 - PRLog -- C. Glenn Begley, Vice President and Global Head of Hematology and Oncology Research at Amgen, will be giving a featured presentation entitled “Challenges in Translating Preclinical Research into Benefit for Patients” at the 3rd Cancer Targets and Therapeutics Conference to be held on February 27-28, 2012 in Las Vegas, NV by GTC. Also presenting at the conference is Jeremy Barton, Vice President of Precision Medicine at Pfizer. Dr. Barton will be speaking on “Patient Selection Strategies for Targeted Therapies and Implementation into Clinical Study Designs”.

Despite major advances in our understanding of mechanisms involved in tumorigenesis, and despite substantial investment over the last several decades, the improvements in outcomes for cancer patients has been unfortunately limited. The principal reason for the lack of major progress is beyond our control: in attempting to treat cancer patients we are seeking to reverse a complex, evolutionary process but by intervening only very late in its course. However there are important elements that are within our control. One such element relates to the robustness and reproducibility of preclinical data. Dr. Begley will discuss a number of recommendations that would improve the reliability and predictive value of the preclinical data upon which we all rely.

C. Glenn Begley MBBS., PhD. is the Vice-President and Global Head of Hematology and Oncology Research at Amgen Inc. Since 2002, Dr Begley has been responsible for establishing and building the Hematology and Oncology Research program at Amgen.  He is responsible for strategy, direction, coordination and integration of the research effort at Amgen sites in Thousand Oaks CA, San Francisco CA, Seattle WA, Burnaby BC, and Cambridge MA.

Before joining Amgen, he had over 20 years clinical experience in medical oncology and hematology, and his personal research focused on translational clinical trials and regulation of hematopoietic cells. One of his early papers first identified the human growth factor, G-CSF. This was followed by studies defining CSF receptor expression and function in-vivo. He first identified the transcription factor SCL, defining its role in leukemia and essential function in hematopoietic stem cells. His clinical studies, demonstrating G-CSF ‘mobilized’ blood stem cells hasten recovery after myeloablation, substantially impacted clinical medicine. He has published over 200 scientific papers and was elected to the prestigious Association of American Physicians in 2008.

The 3rd Cancer Targets and Therapeutics examines new and emerging targets and therapeutics in the area of cancer research. Speakers at the event provide case studies of emerging targets in order to address some of the issues surrounding target-based drug discovery and development. This conference gives global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies as well as academia involved in the field of cancer an opportunity to network with high-level executives from large Pharma, directors and head scientists from top research institutes, and leaders of drug discovery and development in biotech industries.  Companies and institutions presenting at this conference includes, Pfizer, Amgen, Celgene, Johns Hopkins University, Novartis, NCI/NIH, Galena Biopharma, Astex Pharmaceuticals, University of Southern California, Zalicus and many more.

The conference is part of the Targets and Strategies in Drug Discovery Summit, which consists of the following 4 co-located conferences:

2nd Ubiquitin Research and Drug Discovery
4th Ocular Diseases & Drug Discovery
Oncology Partnering & Deal-Making Conference
3rd Cancer Targets and Therapeutics

For more information, please visit www.gtcbio.com

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