• H.E. Dr. Bandar Alknawy, CEO-MNGHA, KSAU-HS President
• Dr. Ahmed Alaskar, KAIMRC Executive Director
• Dr. Mohamed Boudjelal, Conference Chairman
Academic Drug Discovery in Practice – Learnings from the national Swedish SciLifeLab endeavourer with a twist towards targeted protein degradation (30 min)
Prof. Per I. Arvidsson,
Executive Director Drug Discovery & Development
Science for Life Laboratory Stockholm, Sweden
The Innovations from the COVID Pandemic That Will Make the Biggest Impact on Health by 2030 (30 min)
Dr. Ashley McKimm,
Editor-in-Chief, BMJ Innovations
Vaccines and therapies based on synthetic mRNA (30 min)
Dr. Steve Pascolo, Founder And CEO, Miescher Pharma GmbH, Zurich, Switzerland
Leukotriene inhibitors as promising treatment for COVID-19: a New Drug Discovery made in KSA (15 min)
Prof. Mohammed Al Ghobain, Consultant Pulmonologist at King Abdulaziz Medical City, Riyadh, KSA
Cnicin as an Anti-SARS-CoV-2: An Integrated in Silico and in Vitro Approach for the Rapid Identification of Potential COVID-19 Therapeutics” (15 min)
Dr. Hani Abdullah Alhadrami, Consultant, King Abdulaziz University Hospital. King Fahad Medical Research Center, Jeddah, KSA.
The efficacy of Favibravir in treating COVID-19 (FACCT trial) (15 min)
Dr. Mohammad Bosaeed, Infectious Disease Consultant, Department of Medicine, King Abdulaziz Medical city, Riyadh, KSA
Discussion (15 min)
Chairperson: Dr. Naif Al Harbi, Director of Vaccine Development & Production, KAIMRC, KSA
Pathogenic Inflammation in COVID 19 (30 min)
Prof. Miriam Merad, Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA
Anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug discovery: from drug repurposing to traditional Chinese medicine (20 min)
Prof. Hang Yang, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
From COVID-19 vaccines to broader therapeutics based on mRNA-encoded proteins (20 min)
Dr. Cesar Sanz Rodriguez, Vice President Medical Affairs – Europe, Middle East & Africa
RNA-Binding Proteins As a New Class of Anti-Cancer Therapeutic Targets ( 10 min)
Dr. Diu T.T. Nguyen, Group Leader and Lecturer at the Barts Cancer Centre, Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Discussion 10 min
Chairperson: Prof. Majid Alfadhel, Leader of Rare Diseases Program, Deputy Executive Director, KAIMRC, KSA
Building an Industry Leading Pipeline in Rare Disease (30 min)
Dr. Seng H. Cheng, Senior Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer, Rare Disease Research Unit at Pfizer Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Genetic and Rare disease program (GARD): an opportunity for orphan diseases drug discovery and development (20 min)
Prof. Majid Alfadhel, Deputy Executive Director, Chairman, Genetics and Precision Medicine Department, King Abdulaziz Medical City, Riyadh, KSA
Rare Diseases Genetic Link (20 min)
Prof. Fowzan S Alkuraya, MD Principal Clinical Scientist and Senior Consultant, Chairman, Translational Genomics (Center for Genomic Medicine), King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Riyadh, USA
Discussion 20 min
Chairperson: Dr. Mohamed Boudjelal, Director of Drug Discovery Program, KAIMRC, KSA
Prof. Per I. Arvidsson, Executive Director Drug Discovery & Development Science for Life Laboratory Stockholm, Sweden
Dr. Miriam Merad, Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA
Dr. Steve Pascolo, Founder And CEO, Miescher Pharma GmbH, Zurich, Switzerland
Dr. Seng H. Cheng, Senior Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer, Rare Disease Research Unit at Pfizer Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Prof. Majid Alfadhel, Deputy Executive Director, Chairman, Genetics and Precision Medicine Department, King Abdulaziz Medical City, Riyadh, KSA
Prof. Fowzan S Alkuraya, MD Principal Clinical Scientist and Senior Consultant, Chairman, Translational Genomics (Center for Genomic Medicine)
Dr. Hani Abdullah Alhadrami, Consultant, King Abdulaziz University Hospital. King Fahad Medical Research Center, Jeddah, KSA.
Chairperson: Dr. Tlili Barhoumi, Cell-Flow Cytometry Platform, KAIMRC, KSA
Prof. Khuloud T. Al-Jamal, Chair of Drug Delivery & Nanomedicine; School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences King’s College London
BREAST CANCER IN DIABETES – DO ANTIGLYCATION COMPOUNDS HAVE A ROLE? (20 min)
Prof. Nessar Ahmed CSci FIBMS
Reader in Clinical Biochemistry, Department of Life Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Molecular/Precision Oncology Tumor Boards; NGHA local experience (15 min)
Dr. Kanan Alshammari
Director, Middle East – North Africa National Comprehensive Cancer Network (MENA NCCN) Coordinating Center King Abdulaziz Medical City, MNGHA
Considerations for monoclonal antibody development by phage display (15 min)
Dr. Lim Theam Soon, Associate Professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia
Discussion 10 min
Chairperson: Dr. Imadul Islam, Senior Research Scientist-Deputy Director Drug Discovery Program, KAIMRC, KSA
The Fraunhofer 4 D concept for Health: combining drugs, device, diagnostics with data: how we can improve drug discovery to the benefit of the patients (30 min)
Prof. Dr. Claussen, Carsten
Director Fraunhofer IME ScreeningPort, Hamburg, Head of Fraunhofer “Initiative Medical Data Space”, Germany
Anit-COVID19 antibodies (15 min)
Dr. Elif Coşkunçay, M.D., Regional Medical Affairs Lead, COVID Therapeutics, Emerging Markets
Recent Trends on How to Overcome Multidrug Resistant Bacterial Infections’ (15 min)
Dr. Essam A. Tawfik; Director of the National Center for Pharmaceutical Technology at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) Saudi Arabia
Refined antimicrobial lysin: from extracellular killer to intracellular hunter (15 min)
Prof. Hang Yang,
CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Centre for Biosafety Mega-Science, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China
Application of virtual screening for drug repurposing targeting SARS-CoV-2 helicase, main protease, NSP15 and papain-like protease (15 min)
Dr. Yee Siew CHOONG, Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia
KAIMRC’S Discoveries of For MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV2 Inhibitors (15 min)
Dr. Nimer Mehyar, Head Protein-Enzymology Unit, KAIMRC-KSAU Researcher, KSA
Discussion 20 min
Chairperson: Dr. Mai Al Ajaji
Associate Dean|Student Affairs, DSA, KSAU-HS
Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, KSAU-HS, KSA
B cell response to the influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2: Learning from “experiments of nature” (30 min)
Prof. Ali Ellebedy, Department of Pathology & Immunology, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Enhanced targeting of liquid and solid tumors with memory-like NK cells (30 min)
Prof. Rizwan Romee, MD; Associate Professor of Medicine; Harvard Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute; Boston, MA 02215
Novel CAR-T cell Therapy Development and Mechanistic Studies. (20 min)
Prof. Peng li, Principal Investigator, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, CAS (Guangzhou, China)
Discussion 10 min
Chairperson: Dr. Lamya Omair
Head of Bioinformatic Dept., KAIMRC, KSA
End-to-end AI drug discovery for kick-starting novel therapeutic programs (20 min)
Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov
Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine (insilico.com)
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) Capabilities for Drug Discovery (20 min)
Dr. Hani Choudhry
Assistant Deputy Minister for Research and Innovation, the Ministry of Education, KSA, Centre of Artificial Intelligence for Precision Medicine (CAIPM), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, KSA
Machine Learning Applications in Deconvoluting Hit Molecules into Fragments (20 min)
Dr. Shahul Nilar
Director, Computational Chemistry at Global Blood Therapeutics
South San Francisco, USA
Making clinical trials more inclusive and efficient with AI. (20 min)
Dr. James Zou; Biomedical data science, CS and EE at Stanford University, USA
Dr. Ryan Copping ; Global Head of Data Science Acceleration (DSX); PD Data Sciences, Product Development (PD) Roche & Genentech, USA
Discussion 10 min
Chairperson: Dr. Barrak Al Somaie, Director of Operation and Member of KAIMRC Funding Committee, KAIMRC, KSA
Saudi National Institute of Health: Role in Advancing Health Research in Saudi Arabia (20 min)
Dr. Musaad Ali Alshammari, Director of the Research Office Research Office – Saudi NIH
Clinical evaluation of new medicines in a regulatory setting (20 min)
Dr. Ahmed Alkhaldi , Head of clinical studies at the Saudi Food and Drug Authority, Riyadh, KSA
Local Pharmaceutical Industry from Research Bench to Market Shelf (20 min)
Dr. Nabil A. Alhakamy, Faculty of Pharmacy, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah
Chairperson: Dr. Majid Aljeraisy, Head of Research Office and Clinical Trials Unit, KAIMRC, KSA
Prof. Dr. Claussen, Carsten
Director Fraunhofer IME ScreeningPort, Hamburg, Head of Fraunhofer “Initiative Medical Data Space”, Germany
Dr. Elif Coşkunçay, M.D.,
Regional Medical Affairs Lead, COVID Therapeutics, Emerging Markets
Dr. Essam A. Tawfik;
Director of the National Center for Pharmaceutical Technology at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) Saudi Arabia
Prof. Ali Ellebedy
Department of Pathology & Immunology, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Prof. Rizwan Romee,
MD; Associate Professor of Medicine; Harvard Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute; Boston, MA 02215
Prof. Peng li
Principal Investigator, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, CAS (Guangzhou, China)
Dr. Hani Choudhry
Assistant Deputy Minister for Research and Innovation, the Ministry of Education, KSA, Centre of Artificial Intelligence for Precision Medicine (CAIPM), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, KSA
Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov
Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine (insilico.com)
Dr. Shahul Nilar
Director, Computational Chemistry at Global Blood Therapeutics
South San Francisco, USA
Dr. James Zou; Biomedical data science, CS and EE at Stanford University, USA
Dr. Musaad Ali Alshammari, Director of the Research Office Research Office – Saudi NIH