A two day workshop was organized at B.V. Patel PERD Centre, Ahmedabad on October 11 and 12, 2003 as a part of its continuing education programme. The workshop started with welcome address by Harish Padh, Director, PERD Centre, followed by the keynote address delivered by V. Sudarsanam who is emeritus scientist at PERD. He said drug discovery includes everything from disease mechanism, validation of targets, lead optimization, new chemical entities, to doses forms. He further added that the planning for new blockbusters should not over look the importance of older innovative methodologies, knowledge, techniques and science.
Drug discovery in post genomic era, technology trends, international industry, Indian opportunity and various business models were the content of the talk delivered by Sanjay Martis of Nicholas Piramal, He elucidated the topic 'Strategic planning in genomic research'. 'Fail fast and cheap’ in drug discovery was the focus of the deliberation by Vadlamudi Rao of Suven Pharma. He emphasized on early ADMET studies for evaluation of compound, which can help in faster process of lead generation, and lead optimization, which in turn can reduce the expenses and time between discoveries and marketing of the drug. Potential of structure-based drug design in discovery of new chemical entities was discussed with many successful examples by V. M. Kulkarni.
Harish Padh, of PERD talked about importance of rationalized therapy and pharmacogenomics, 'Astute clinical observations leading to new drugs and new uses of old drugs' was the topic of deliberation by Ashok Batham of Sun Pharma. Many live examples were cited in the talk which gave a new area to the scientists to think about and make use of the knowledge wealth available with clinicians. B. B. Lohray of Zydus Research Centre, talked on new approaches for designing of oral anti diabetic drugs.
The first day ended with the talk by J Ramesh of Astra Zeneca. In his lucid presentation, he talked about challenges in the discovery of novel drugs for tuberculosis.
The attractions of the second day of the workshop were talk on 'Design of phosphodi esterase inhibitors' by B. Gopalan of Glenmark. 'Design and discovery of hypolipedemic drugs' by Swaroop Kumar of Glenmark Research Centre. Pharmacological approaches for management of obesity were highlighted by K. H. Sreedhara Swamy of Quest Life Science. In his presentation, he explained various areas related to obesity like genetic factor, molecular mechanism and treatment of obesity. He also expressed the need of drug with long term efficacy, 'Development of novel antibacterial drug' was the topic of the talk given by Mahesh V. Patel of Wockhardt Research Centre. He explained the need and strategies for these drugs, C. T. Rao of Sun Pharma touched the area of most common disorder, allergy-its etiology and therapy. Therapeutic role of Nitric oxide was elucidated by Kamala Vasu of PERD. The two day workshop came to an end with concluding remarks by V. Sudarsanam.
The workshop received an overwhelming response from academicians, industries and small scale industries. Participation of delegates in discussion after each talk made the workshop live, more informative and good learning experience for all.