Draft Outline
(as of May 21, 2009)

Linking Cellular Signaling Pathways and Systems Biology

• Screening paradigms which address complexity of cellular signaling pathways
• Whole pathway analysis to assess specificity, efficacy and safety of a compound series
• Understanding the "cellulome" by high fidelity interrogation of cells and tissue pathways
• Label free cell-based approaches
• RNAi combined with cell-based approaches
• Use of antibodies and proteins to probe cells
• Multiplexed microarrays

Critical Review of Cellular Assays and Technologies Moving Compounds to the Clinic: What is Working? What Isn't?

• Case studies where a technology/assay was the reason a compound progressed to preclinical/clinical development
• Functional selectivity of assays - which assay to use you to get the picture you want?
• Cellular sensors
• Reporter assays, target-specific assays, phenotypic assays, pathway-specific assays, assays for endogenous processes/targets
• Comparing success/failures of cell-based assays vs. biochemical assays and other assays formats. What is the right approach for a given target?
• High content approaches

Allosteric Modulation of GPCRs and Other Targets

• Applications for hard-to-access/unvalidated GPCR targets
• Applications for currently validated GPCR targets
• Impact on improved drug safety
• Potential for combination therapies
• Are there applications in ion channels, kinases or other targets?

Stem Cells and Stem Cell Tissues as Models for Drug Screening and Target Validation

• Stem cell generation, differentiation and characterization
• Applications of stem-cell derived models for drug screening
• Case studies of emerging techniques and novel uses of stem cells
• Advantages and pitfalls of stem cells and stem cell tissue

Cell-Based Disease Models for Drug Discovery

• Use of primary cells: Case studies of successes, current capabilities and bottlenecks
• Primary cells from patients
• Physiologically relevant cell culture environments and models
• Whole blood approaches
• Tissue and organ-specific cell models

High Content Cellular Imaging, Analysis and Screening to Profile and Prioritize Compounds

• Live cell imaging
• Case studies of new, multiplexed cell-based assays and practical implementations
• Overcoming the bottlenecks: instrumentation cost, data analysis, lack of standardization and throughput
• New instrumentation and methods
• New software and algorithms for rapid processing of data