Larix International Chemical Biology Conferences

Larix International Chemistry Conferences

Larix International is a group of ranking publishers and organizer’s for scientific conferences around the globe nesting well-known Doctors, Engineers, Scientists, and Industrialists. Larix is a self-functioning, independent organization wholly focused on arranging conferences in multi-disciplines of research on various science fields. The conferences are administered by global influential scientists and scientific excellence. We are even open for the upcoming scientists and scholars, who are in need of a platform to give their voice a much needed larger volume.

International Conference on Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery (Chemical Biology 2019) is going to be organized in the beautiful city of Singapore, on October June 20-21, 2019, primarily focusing on the theme “Interdisciplinary Approaches for Druggable Targets”.

THE CHEMICAL BIOLOGY

Chemical biology is the study of the chemicals and chemical reactions involved in biological processes, incorporating the disciplines of bioorganic chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, and pharmacology. Chemicals – including natural small molecules, such as lipids, carbohydrates, and metals, or non-natural probe or drug molecules – are used to gain insight into biological problems at a mechanistic level. t only emerged about 20 years ago when chemists became interested in applying chemistry to studying biological systems. Initially, chemical biology was a way of making new small molecules that have biological effects and understanding how biological systems make small molecules, but the discipline has grown remarkably over a short period of time, attracting attention as a pursuit for better understanding and more efficiently utilizing biology and as a way of finding better drug targets and treatment options as well as better biomarkers and diagnostic strategies.

ALL ABOUT IT

The Chemical Biology section publishes significant fundamental and applied for advances across all aspects of chemical biology, a rapidly growing field at the interface of chemistry and biology. This interdisciplinary forum highlights new chemical tools and techniques to visualize, understand and manipulate biological systems and processes at the molecular level. Topics include, but are not limited to:

·        Mechanistic studies on carbohydrates, lipids, peptides, proteins, and nucleic acids

·        Protein and enzyme design and engineering

·        Enzyme mechanism and biosynthesis of natural products

·        Biological systems engineered to perform novel chemical transformations

·        Intra- and intercellular communication mediated by small molecules

·        Design and use of novel molecular systems as tools to study synthetic and systems biology

·        Special chemical techniques (e.g. click chemistry and molecular imaging) to study biomolecules in living cells and organisms

·        Generation, distribution and function of small molecule-protein conjugates

·        Novel molecular probes to identify and characterize potential therapeutic targets

·        Large-scale studies enabled by the use of chemistry-based technology: proteomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, and glycomics.

DISCUSSIONS

Proteins and peptides; Lipids, carbohydrates and natural product; Receptor agonist and antagonist

Signal transduction modulator; Protease substrate and inhibitor; Synthetic methods; Structure-based drug design; Molecular modeling; In-Silico chemoinformatics; Nuclear Chemistry/Radiochemistry; Biophysical technologies; Analytical technologies;  target ; proteomics;  Chemical genomics; Molecular screening technologies; ADMET and drug design & delivery; Emerging Chemical and biological drug designs; Concept Ligands and breakthrough medicines.

ATTENDEES AND AUDIENCE

Eminent Scientists/ Research Professors in the field of Medicinal chemistry and Drug Delivery, Junior/Senior research fellows, Students, Directors of Pharmaceutical research companies, Chemical Engineers, Members of different physics and Chemistry associations.

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What are molecular dynamics and MD simulation?

In computational chemistry, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are when you simulate or model the motion s and behavior of individual atoms in a molecule or molecules of your choosing by applying the laws of classical mechanics to solve for parameters such as velocity, charge, position and so on. Inevitably the use of classical mechanics to describe such small particles means that one ends up relying on some parameters that should be measured (experimentally, or calculated through some ab initio method. More on this below) or known beforehand (from scientific literature). The collections of such parameters are known as forcefields. Examples for some forcefields that are used today are CHARMM and AMBER forcefields.

Molecular dynamics calculations can be less accurate than quantum mechanics calculations but are relatively a lot faster in most situations. Quantum mechanics calculations of the ab initio type don't suffer from the same crutch as MD simulations in that they calculate everything from scratch, and do not require you to provide experimental information.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/What-are-molecular-dynamics-and-MD-simulation

What are some interesting advancements in green chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry?

I think the most interesting, is in improving the manufacturing process of pharmaceuticals.  The end results are the same, but the environmental impacts of some pharmaceutical processing is really terrible, and new processes are much improved.

In particular, a lot of pharmaceuticals use some nasty solvents.  See Page on rowan.edu for a paper called "A method to characterize the greenness of solvents used in pharmaceutical manufacture."  This paper is from 2007, and there have been more improvements since then.  But the concept remains the same.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-interesting-advancements-in-green-chemistry-in-the-pharmaceutical-industry

Why do doctors only prescribe drugs instead of natural remedies? For instance, turmeric instead of an anti inflammatory drug like Advil?

Natural remedies fall into two categories, those with relevant active ingredients (ie. those containing chemicals that will treat the condition) and those without.

Those without don't work, full stop. Walnuts won't cure migraine just because they look like little brains, old wives tale, there's no point prescribing something that doesn't work. I take it we can agree to this? Cool.

Now, the other group, this does contain active ingredients, willow bark contains acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) and can relieve pain, fever and inflamation, (pretty good huh?), plants in the digitalis family contain cardiac glycosides that can control otherwise potentially fatal heart conditions (even better!), this isn't woo woo or superstition this is real, wow! So why don't doctors prescribe the plants?

Three main reasons, firstly, and by far the least important, price, convenience and palatability. Would you rather swallow a tablet of synthesized ASA or gather willow bark, brew a foul tasting tea and force yourself to swallow it while, btw, being in pain? Would a manufacturer sooner spend years growing willow trees (that require a very particular environment) in order to harvest the bark then ship it out complete with wood fibre, or synthesize the ASA and ship tiny tablets of the bit that works? Which gives you pain relief at pennies a dose?

The second reason is that natural remedies are taking advantage of chemicals that plants create for themselves, not us, they make a lot of chemicals. Some are beneficial to us, some aren't. Some will kill you in surprisingly small doses. Plants can also absorb chemicals from their environment. Would you sooner take a tablet containing only the relevant chemical, or do you want a pot luck of chemicals including the one you want plus potential toxins?

Thirdly, dosage. The concentration of your active ingredient will vary from plant to plant, between different parts of the same plant, and over the course of time. Most chemicals that may save your life in the correct dose will kill you if you take too much. Take too little and it won't help and your underlying condition might kill you. Add to that preparation variations: was the water hot enough and did you let your herbal tea steep long enough or too long; did you macerate it enough, too little, too much? Did you have the right bit of the plant, a bit that's too strong, one too weak, one picked at the wrong time of the year, one that grew next to a waste disposal site? Or would you sooner have a pill with a defined quantity of the chemical that could save or kill you?

Choosing ‘natural remedies' over ‘drugs' is like throwing out your cooker and roasting your dinner over an open fire in the middle of your living room. Sure it can cook the food and it's traditional, but it's less convenient, will fill the room with smoke and may get out of control, burn your house down and kill you. We do things the modern way for pretty good reasons.

ETA: It's been noted in the comments that willow bark actually contains just salicylic acid not acetylsalicylic acid. It has some of the same effects, but the acetyl group makes it safer, which is why the acetyl group is added chemically to the natural occurring salicylic acid. Thanks to Kasper Emil Feld for pointing this out (and adding another reason to prefer the pill!).

Reference: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-doctors-only-prescribe-drugs-instead-of-natural-remedies-For-instance-turmeric-instead-of-an-anti-inflammatory-drug-like-Advil

What is a chemical reaction?

Chemical Reactions are certain chemical processes that involve rearranging the molecular structure of a molecule. The atoms of the molecule do not change, but the arrangement of the atoms and the bonds holding the atoms together do change.

There are many kinds of chemical reactions like synthesis reaction: where two molecules join together to form one molecule. The atoms don’t change but the molecular arrangement changes when both molecules merge into one.

Here is an image of a simple chemical reaction that produces water.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-chemical-reaction-2

How important is small molecule structure determination for drug development and discovery?

Very. Let’s say you have a compound that does something amazing to your cell culture. You know the structure, and have a pretty good idea how it binds to its target receptor, and the pharmacological mechanism(s) responsible for its amazing effects. Before you can consider this lead compound a drug candidate, you have to consider a few things, including (but not limited to):

• Solubility[1] - What kind of vehicle are you going to use to administer this compound? Good drug candidates are frequently poorly soluble in saline, but DMSO can be toxic.[2][3]
• Bioavailability - When administered via injection will it distribute into tissues, or get stuck on plasma proteins and never make it out of the blood stream?
• BBB permeability - Will it cross the blood-brain-barrier? Sometimes the answer you want is yes, sometimes it’s no.
• Off-target interactions - What are the chances this compound might preferentially bind to say, potassium channels? That wouldn’t be good.
• Metabolites - Might they be toxic? How about bioactive?
• Route of administration - Turns out that humans don’t like getting shots.[4] People much prefer pills. Is the compound something that could be absorbed through the GI tract?

Anyway, good drug candidates frequently have structures designed to address these and other issues.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/How-important-is-small-molecule-structure-determination-for-drug-development-and-discovery

Is a “vape” a drug delivery system and what besides nicotine might be delivered by it?
There are a lot of different forms of ¨vapes¨, but the main kind is designed to deliver nicotine in a safer and more effective way than cigarettes (or other nicotine delivery methods). They contain a thick liquid called e-juice, which is a mixture of propylene glycol and/or vegetable glycol, as well as flavoring and nicotine (Among others depending on the situation.) You can also suspend other drugs into a PG solution, really, anything that can be smoked will also be vape-able.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/Is-a-vape-a-drug-delivery-system-and-what-besides-nicotine-might-be-delivered-by-it

Inorganic Chemistry: What is the binding affinity of Iron (III) with EDTA and Deferoxamine?

EDTA has almost no affinity for iron and therefore no clinical benefit, deferoxamine is the treatment of choice for acute and chronic (e.g hemochromatosis) iron overload.  EDTA has been studied and used successfully to improve renal function in patients with impaired kidney function not due to lead toxicity(http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/co...).  So while the mainstream medicine mantra is that EDTA is toxic to the kidneys, a double blind study has shown a  marked benefit in those with renal failure when treated with EDTA.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/Inorganic-Chemistry-What-is-the-binding-affinity-of-Iron-III-with-EDTA-and-Deferoxamine

How are Medicinal tablets  small yet powerful?

You do not chew poisonous or medicinal drugs. You eat fruits which are food - they mainly have carbohydrates. They lack medicinal properties. That is the bias.

Fruits & plants will work in the same way. If you eat poisonous mushroom definitely you’ll die if amount become more. They are for supplying energy, vitamins, minerals, hunger etc. If you do not easy so much bulk, you’ll jump out of hunger.

In the same way, we do prescribe specific foods as like medicine for vitamin, mineral deficiencies. Amla fruit is as good as taking vitamin C tablets, indeed far superior.

Medicine tablets has specific mechanism of action. They have the active ingredient in pure form in fully weighed manner. After taking it, the tablet breaks down, ultimately get absorbed. The molecules are designed or selected not to get destroyed. It pass the Liver and goes to blood of whole body. From blood, it can go to the targeted tissues in higher concentration.

There are other stuffs in a tablet apart from the real medicine. 0.5 mg weight is just small, there many other stuffs which makes the tablets big. What will be mixed, how much will much will mixed, that depends on the drug and that is of Pharmacy’s part, not really ours at this era.

Of course there are medicines which work quite simply. One of the example is Digene. Another example isabgol husk. It is too costly matter to eat Digene, isabgol husk instead of normal foods. Special formula actually given instead of oral food for too much sick persons.

You can eat Digene out of hunger but that is not quite recommendable. Magnesium content is huge, you may have diarrhea after such odd Digene meal.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/How-are-Medicinal-tablets-small-yet-powerful

Why can't we use the chemical compunds of our plastics to power things such as cars?

We can!!! It’s just a matter of cost, availability and motivation. Efficiency is always a consideration for the production of anything, including fuels. Having a market is always a consideration for developing a process for anything. It is virtually impossible to beat coal, natural gas, and petroleum feed stocks.

Reference:https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-we-use-the-chemical-compunds-of-our-plastics-to-power-things-such-as-cars

How does cancer treatment based on genomic data differ from standard techniques, such as chemical therapy?

First of all, to understand the reason behind the tailored therapy against cancer, you need to understand the causes of cancer. Although it is a widespread definition that Cancer is a mass of cells with infinite growth potential, but it is the genome wherein the reasons behind this potential can be found. The current decade 2005 onwards witnessed a massive revolution as the sequencing technologies developed in almost geometric progression. Genomics came a long way from Sanger sequencing in the earlier era to the current Illumina and other next generation sequencing platforms.

The Genomics approach towards the cancer has led to the understanding of the progression of several Cancer types by studying the mutations termed as Driver and Passenger mutations in the genome. We know that there are several classes of genes that need to be mutated for cancer to progress. These are tumor-suppressors, genes that protect our cells from cancer, so they need to be inactivated by mutations, and oncogenes. These genes need to be overactivated by mutations, but again these are just mutations, just changes in DNA. Or, for example, amplifications of the same gene: it’s not mutated, but now instead of one copy of the gene you get ten copies of the gene. And that’s enough to make the cancer cell. So the mutations may not really be the changes in DNA sequence, there can be certain aberrations in the intricate regulation machinery of these genes causing an inactivation of the tumor-suppressors or causing ectopic expression of the oncogenes.

But mutations cannot really hit at specific positions. That’s the essence of Darwinian theory of evolution that mutations happen at random. So that means that cells are sitting and waiting for the next mutation, and now we’re talking about cancer, so cancer cells are sitting waiting for the next mutation to happen. When this mutation happens in one of the cells, the cell will take over the population and will form sort of a new layer of cancer, if you wish. In biology we call this clonal selection,i.e. a particular population of cells becomes dominant.

However, the cells are sitting and waiting for the right mutation, so they are getting random mutations. And they are generally getting a little bit sick of this random mutations. These mutations are collectively called ‘passengers’. So those mutations that drive cancer progression are called ‘drivers’ and others are called ‘passengers’. It’s is generally "believed" that passengers are neutral, they play no role in cancer. Because drivers are usually the same in different patients, but passengers are all different.

So one of the major center of focus of current cancer genomics is to profile the cancer genome from several patients and based on the specific passenger and driver mutation, tailor a patient specific therapy. Moreover, this was needed given the highly heterogenous nature of the cancer. By far several disorders in medical history could be diagnosed and treated by particular fixed symptoms and targets, but in cancer that is not the case. Moreover it is now also observed that the differential response and reversion ability of cancer patients to the radiotherapy and chemotherapy is because certain patients are genetically predisposed to do so.

By far the 1000 genome project has given us only the exome sequence data, so this just gives us information about the driver and passenger mutations from the coding regions of the cancer genome which is far from less compared to the complete genome. Albeit, this data too has led to beliefs that genomics has lot of potential to determine the cancer therapy for every patient based on his genetic predisposition. Hence given the level of complexity Cancer possesses, Genomics by far gives the best possible approach to design very reliable therapies.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/How-does-cancer-treatment-based-on-genomic-data-differ-from-standard-techniques-such-as-chemical-therapy

If computational chemistry methods like density functional theory work well for organic chemistry, why are experimental techniques like X-ray diffraction needed to predict structure, & why isn't drug discovery using computer simulation easy?

TLDR; Highly accurate computational chemistry methods do work very well for organic chemistry - as long as the molecules are reasonably small, isolated and cold. Protein-ligand-systems under physiological conditions are large, dissolved (and perhaps “crowded”) and hot.

Quantum chemistry exhibits bad computational scaling properties, which makes calculations on condensed matter systems like e.g. a protein with a drug molecule in its binding site and dissolved in water (such systems have something like 100000 atoms) at ambient temperature extremely expensive. This is slowly changing, but we are currently barely at a point where the much cheaper molecular-mechanical forcefield calculations are fast enough to calculate the free energy of binding (the measure of binding strength) between a protein and a potential drug molecule on a timescale and with costs palatable to industrial researchers (but those are not particularly accurate…). The reason is that unless your system is ultra-cold, the atoms are moving all the time and you need not a calculation on a single structure but lots and lots of them to get a meaningfull “ensemble” of structures that truly sample and/or represent the many degrees of freedom of movement such a system has.

Structure prediction for organic crystals (small molecules) is more tractable. However, this is still a global optimization problem that again requires thousands of calculations. Nevertheless it nowadays seems to work reasonably well, see e.g. the Report on the sixth blind test of organic crystal structure prediction methods. Now if you again mean predicting the structure of protein-ligand-systems, this is again currently out of reach due to the computational expense.

Reference: https://www.quora.com/If-computational-chemistry-methods-like-density-functional-theory-work-well-for-organic-chemistry-why-are-experimental-techniques-like-X-ray-diffraction-needed-to-predict-structure-why-isnt-drug-discovery-using-computer-simulation-easy 

Which pipeline products are available for protein and peptide-based therapeutics?

Protein and peptide-based therapeutics have been in use for more than three decades since the approval of recombinant human insulin, the first protein therapy, in 1982. Earlier, most biologic drugs were delivered through the subcutaneous route. However, over time, advances in delivery formulations have enabled the development of orally administrable versions of therapeutic proteins / peptides. Owing to numerous compelling reasons, the concept of oral delivery has gained significant traction. The first oral protein / peptide-based product candidate, Linzess®, was launched in 2012 in the US and EU. Recently, Trulance®, another orally administrable product was approved in the US (January 2017) for the treatment of chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC). In fact, in January 2018, Trulance® was approved for another indication, namely irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C).

Around 100 oral protein / peptide therapeutics are currently being developed across various preclinical / clinical stages for a diverse range of indications. Two products, namely Linzess® (Ironwood Pharmaceuticals) and Trulance® (Synergy Pharmaceuticals), are commercially available; of these, Trulance® was approved in January 2017. Nearly 41% of the pipeline molecules are under clinical development; of these, 8 molecules are being investigated in phase III and phase II/III, 18 molecules in phase II, 5 molecules in phase II (planned), 1 in phase I/II, and 9 molecules in phase I and phase I (planned) clinical trials. However, majority (57%) of the product candidates in the pipeline are still in the preclinical and discovery stages.

To overcome the challenges related to the effective administration of oral biologics, several innovative technologies to formulate and deliver oral biologics are being developed. Notable examples of advanced drug delivery technologies include (in decreasing order of number of pipeline products) Robotic Pill Maker technology (Rani Therapeutics), Peptelligence® (Enteris BioPharma), Axcess

TM oral drug delivery technology (Proxima Concepts), Oral Peptide Utility System (OPUS) technology (Biolingus), Sublingual Immunotherapy (SLIT) technology (Biolingus), and Oramed Protein Oral Delivery (POD) technology (Oramed Pharmaceuticals).

According to a recent report published by Roots Analysis on ‘Oral Proteins and Peptides Market (3rd Edition), 2018-2030’, 42% of the products in the development pipeline are designed to treat various metabolic disorders, including (in decreasing order of number of pipeline products) diabetes, obesity and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Nearly 15% of therapy candidates are being developed for the treatment of digestive and gastrointestinal disorders, including (in decreasing order of number of pipeline products) chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC), irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis), opioid-induced constipation (OIC) and short bowel syndrome (SBS). Products are also being developed for other therapeutic areas, such as autoimmune disorders (9), infectious diseases (9), hormonal disorders (5), bone disorders (4), blood disorders (3), various oncological indications (2), respiratory disorders (2), urogenital disorders (2), genetic disorders (1) and neurodegenerative disorders (1).

Reference:
https://www.rootsanalysis.com/reports/view_document/oral-proteins-and-peptides-market-3rd-edition-2018-2030/192.html