Invited Speaker

Literature Based Discovery: The Biovista Platform for Clinical Outcomes Analysis
Andreas Persidis
Greece

Title of the Speech: Literature Based Discovery: The Biovista Platform for Clinical Outcomes Analysis Abstract: The pharmaceutical industry is at a crossroads and facing increasing pressure for change. A number of important drivers are currently at play:

1. Investment in R&D is increasing while output of drugs is decreasing - this is the "falling lab-efficiency" issue.
2. Many companies are facing the "patent cliff" issue where in the next 5 years over $60bn will be lost to generics.
3. Regulatory authorities and the medicare system are pushing for cheaper drugs and are not as ready to accept 'cosmetic' drug reformulations as a mechanism for extending patent protection.
4. There is increasing pressure to make better use of existing knowledge and company IP.
5. It seems that the industry has harvested the "low hanging fruit" and that new drugs will only result if our understanding of biology (organisms in their healthy state as well as the modification of biological states and processes that results from each disease (i.e. disease mechanisms)) is significantly improved.
6. There is significant pressure to increase the industry's Adverse Event prediction capability so as to be able to address the benefit-risk profile of a drug candidate much better than is currently the case.

The pharma industry is considering its options including technologies that lead to better predictive capability and strategies such as drug repositioning that promise to increase the entire drug development process.

Biovista has developed a literature-based discovery platform that allows it to predict with a high degree of accuracy (70%) not only repositioning opportunities but also the Adverse Event profile of any drug, thus being the only company that can address both the benefit and the risk aspects of a drug.

This technological platform has already been used to identify drugs with very good efficacy profiles in MS and epilepsy in very short time periods and at relatively low cost. The talk will focus on the presentation of this platform, as well as case studies covering its successful application in MS. We will discuss not only how it can be used to identify promising drug candidates but also help better understand disease mechanisms of action.