Minutes for the P30 Meeting for July 10, 2015

2:00 – 3:00 pm

Dr. Oscar Lopez presented a very interesting talk entitled “Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease”, in which he described AD clinical presentation, the negative factors that are associated with those who acquire AD, the positive factors associated with those who do not get AD, and an extensive overview of the various treatments that have been tested in clinical trials (past and ongoing). Little success has been made in developing new AD treatments, reflected by the fact that the last time a drug was approved by the FDA for AD was in 2003. However, there is some evidence that anti-amyloid drugs combined with anti-hypertensive drugs (e.g., cholinesterase inhibitors) might be beneficial. While these treatments improve the AD patient’s quality of life, unfortunately, they do not significantly improve overall survival.

3:00 – 4:00 pm

On behalf of Dr. Bahar’s group, Indira Shrivastava presented a hands-on tutorial using Druggui, which gives a simulation trajectory analysis that can be used to build a pharmacophore that is predicted to bind to specific (“druggable”) sites on the protein surface. A combination of various chemical probes, which serve as mimics of various functional group commonly found on drugs, serves as part of the input. Despite some technical problems, the capabilities of the program were communicated.

4:00 – 5:00 pm

A brief Executive Meeting was held, during which was discussed:

  1. Updating the CDAR website to list recent publications (along with brief descriptions), as well as upcoming meetings; a concern was also expressed that we need to show that we are disseminating information
  2. A Date and Time for:
    1. Monthly P30 Meetings – determined to be the first Friday of the month – the next meeting will be Friday, August 7, 2015 from 2 – 5 pm and will be hosted by Dr. Xing’s group at CMU
    2. Annual EAB Meeting – determined to be Thursday, May 19, 2016
  3. Concerns over developing collaborations (Dr. Bahar) & the possibility of inviting potential collaborators to come in and give a talk

 

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