PRE-CONFERENCE WORKHOPS – 3rd Therapeutics Discovery

Day One: 22 February 2022

Time(Riyadh Time)	Pre-Conference Workshops and Courses
09:00 – 12:00	Pre-Conference Workshops and Courses
13:40-16:30	Pre-Conference Workshops and Courses
Organized Visit to KSA Historical and Cultural Sites in Riyadh
18:00 – 22:00	Tour visit to Riyadh

Venue : KAIMRC

Introduction

We are currently involved in drug discovery at KAIMRC and to support drug discovery, we have a number of activities such as biochemical and cell-based assays in conjunction with small molecule libraries. Many of the cell-based assays can be employed in a variety of areas such as in vitro toxicity assays thus allowing the identification of promising compounds for progression in the drug discovery process. In addition to that, we have robust medicinal chemistry/synthetic chemistry group who are involved in synthesis of novel compounds, SAR development and antibody drug conjugates,

This course will serve as a “one-stop event,” providing the essential knowledge and technologies to identify and advance compounds from initial compound library screening and tool compound profiling through various assays eventually into preclinical validation with focus on Immuno-Inflammatory Diseases.

Attendees from academia and industry will also learn from specific case studies examples and will have an opportunity to engage in interactive discussions on securing collaboration and partnerships.

Course Objectives

Train a cadre of interdisciplinary scientists in the principles of drug discovery.
Provide a platform to exchange ideas, knowledge and resources about drug discovery.
Stimulate pre-clinical research in the discovery and testing of novel compounds aimed at the prevention and treatment different diseases
Build public-private partnerships that will accelerate drug discovery in KAIMRC.

Who should attend?

This workshop is designed for researchers, clinicians and managers who wish to learn about the processes, challenges and rewards of working in the pharmaceutical industry. The workshop will be divided into two schemes: A Foundation workshop for 2 hours that must be attended by all. A comprehensive overview of all stages of the Drug Discovery process will be given in order to enable participants to bridge knowledge gaps and provide a business advantage. Followed by 2 hours Themes Workshops “Tracks” in such the attendees will shop the best workshop that fits better his/her field of interest and interest

Venue: KAIMRC

Day: 22 February 2022

Time (Riyadh Time): 13:40-16:30

Introduction

KAIMRC is actively involved in drug discovery and its successes in this field are demonstrated by publications, patents and clinical trials. In order to further support this effort, KAIMRC has state-of-the-art infrastructure which are readily accessible by its researchers.

The aim of this workshop is to give an overview of the drug discovery and development process. There will a particular focus on pre-clinical drug discovery, namely drug target identification and validation, development of assays, screening, identification of chemical starting points for drug discovery and their optimization so they are suitable for evaluation in the clinic.

Experts in the field will describe the above processes and participate in a Q&A session to answer any specific questions.

Course Objectives

Train a cadre of interdisciplinary scientists in the principles of drug discovery.
Describe the biological processes in drug target identification and validation, assay development and screening compound libraries.
Illustrate how the chemical matter identified from the screening activities are optimized using experimental compound synthesis, computational methods and ADMET prior to clinic evaluation.
Demonstrate that drug discovery is a team effort that requires collaboration of a multi-disciplinary team including experts in basic medical research, medicinal chemistry, intellectual property, regulatory affairs, clinical trial management and the commercial management of the life cycle of drugs.
Provide a platform to exchange ideas, knowledge and resources to accelerate drug discovery at KAIMRC.

Who should attend?

This workshop is designed for researchers, clinicians and managers who wish to learn about the processes, challenges and rewards of working in drug discovery.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Sheraz Gul. Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology, Germany.

Dr Sheraz Gul is Head of Drug Screening & Compound Repurposing at the Fraunhofer Institute. He is a drug discovery expert with experience in academia (University of London), industry (GSK) & the largest European applied research organization (Fraunhofer Institute). He is a visiting Professor & scientific co-founder of Transcriptogen Ltd and has co-ordinated work packages in numerous assay development and screening projects to deliver validated Hit, Lead and Candidate molecules. He is co-author of >60 peer-reviewed papers, the Enzyme Assays: Essential Data handbook and has organized 49 global drug discovery workshops & trained >950 scientists.

Dr. Mohamed Boudjelal:

Chairman of KAIMRC Core facility and Drug Discovery Unit, Dr. Boudjelalhas more 20 years experience in Drug Discovery, Medical Research and Management Dr. Boudjelal is currently employed by National Guard at King Abdullah International Medical Research Center(KAIMRC), in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Dr. Boudjelal is a head of Medical Research Core Facilities and Platforms/ Operation Manager of Saudi Biobank. Prior Joining KAIMRC, Dr.Boudjelal was an employer of GlaxoSmithKline as a Group leader in the Biological Reagents and Assay Development for pre-clinical drug discovery programs. Prior joining GSK, Mohamed held a position as an Associate Director for preclinical drug discovery in Incyte (Pfizer) pharmaceutical, and worked as a Scientist in Institute of Genetic and Molecular and Cellular Biology, Strasbourg, France, and as a senior research associate (permanent position) at the University of Michigan, USA. Mohamed holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from University of Leeds, UK, and a diploma in International Business and vocal education from University of California in San Diego. Dr. Boudjelal is recipient of several awards for scientific research excellence from Dermatology foundation, American Association for Cancer Research and GSK exceptional science award.

Cell Culture and Cell Based Assays Course

February, 22-23, 2021

Introduction:
Mammalian cell culture is an integral tool in many workflows of biological studies. This course is designed to provide key cell culture techniques and best practice for maintaining healthy cell lines and obtaining the most accurate and reproducible results in downstream applications. This training program will focus on how cell culture is used for in vitro assays. It will help attendees understand the uses of an in vitro testing with eukaryotic cell based systems and the parameters to be considered in the development and the optimization of a cell based assay.

Course objectives:

Good cell culture practice including safety procedures, exposure to facilities’ equipment, Reagents preparation, storage and handling, principles of aseptic techniques i.e. how to use Class II safety cabinets
Media preparation, cell line maintenance, passaging, freezing and recovery.
Manipulation of established cell lines under various experimental conditions. For example paraptosis induction and spheroids formation.
Transient transfection of mammalian cells and imaging under fluorescence microscopy.
Performing cell-based techniques such as cell viability, proliferation and cell death analysis.

Who should attend?

This course is intended for graduate students, post-graduate students and health science professionals who are interested in Cell culture and cell based assays.

Instructor:

Dr. Arwa Alsubait, postdoctoral researcher at the Medical Research Core Facility and Platforms department at King Abdullah International Medical research Center (KAIMRC). I graduated from King Saud University with a bachelor degree in Clinical Laboratory Science. Afterwards, I joined KAIMRC where I received a scholarship and pursued my graduate studies in the USA. I finished my masters from Georgetown University in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Then I earned my Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America in Cell and microbial biology with specialization in understanding the transcriptional regulation machinery of a set of mammalian genes that are involved in the development of a rare genetic disorder using the CRISPR-Cas9 as a gene-editing tool. My research interests’ area are gene editing in cancer and the use of microRNAs as prognostic biomarkers in cancer.

Nanotechnology as a flexible Platform for Drug Delivery

Duration of the Course: 3 hours

Description of the Course:

The course will include the definition and the advantages of using nanoparticles for therapeutic agents as compared to classical drug delivery methods. The structure and composition of different types of nanoparticles will be highlighted. Experimental techniques used in nanoparticles preparation will be presented along with examples from KAIMRK research projects.

The objectives:

Introducing the different types of nanoparticles used to deliver drugs
Methods of preparing nanoparticles for drug delivery
Advantages of drug delivery using nanoparticles
Research work carried out in KAIMRC and in KSA on nanoparticles.

Targeted audience:

Research assistants and technologists in Medical and Science Research Centers
Technical personnel in pharma industry
Students of pharmaceutical and applied sciences
Technical Personnel in quality control and standardization
Technical personnel in o food and drug authorities

Instructor:

Prof. Khalid Abu-Salah obtained his first degree from the American University of Beirut and completed his studies towards a PhD degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds (U. K). He was recruited by the University of London to be among the first few biochemists to arrive in Saudi Arabia to teach Medical Biochemistry at the Medical College of King Saud University (formerly, Riyadh University).

Prof. Abu-Salah is one of the main cofounders of the first Biochemistry department and MSc program in the same university. He taught a broad range of BSc and MSc courses to a population of students with many science backgrounds and co-supervised some Ph.D. students. He obtained the fellowship status of the Institute of Biomedical Science (FIBMS)-UK in the year 1993. Prof. Abu-Salah joined the editorial board of Biochemical Education published by the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1991-1999). He authored about eighty published research papers in peer-reviewed journals and has a few patents to his credit. Besides, Prof. Abu-Salah authored and translated seven books. Prof. Abu-Salah is proud of being a main co-founder of King Abdullah Institute for Nanotechnology (KAIN) in King Saud University (KSU) in 2008 besides having a visiting professor status at some European and South East Asian Universities.

After moving to King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC) in 2014, Prof. Abu-Salah participated actively in establishing a Nanomedicine Department. Currently he is leading the nano-biotechnology laboratory at KAIMRC with researchers working on various projects related to aptamer-based nano-biosensors with lab-on-a-chip nano-diagnostic applications, and nano-drug formulation and delivery Prof. Khalid Abu-Salah obtained his first degree from the American University of Beirut and completed his studies towards a PhD degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds (U.K). He was recruited by the University of London to be among the first few biochemists to arrive in Saudi Arabia to teach Medical Biochemistry at the Medical College of King Saud University (formerly, Riyadh University).

High Content Imaging (HCI) in Drug discovery and development 3 hours

Introduction to HCI
Assay development in phenotypic drug discovery
Data acquisition
User guided large data sets analysis
Deep learning in HCI

Instructor

Dr. rer. nat. Rizwan Ali is a Molecular Biologist and Microscopist with extensive experience in molecular biology and confocal live cell imaging. He received his PhD from Technical University of Dresden Germany. Currently he is Associate Research Scientist at the King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC) Riyadh Saudi Arabia. Prior to joining KAIMRC, Dr. Rizwan Ali worked at the National University of Ireland (NUIGalway) and Technical University of Dresden (TUD), Germany. His research is in the field of fluorescence microscopy and he is interested in developing and applying new methods in advance fluorescence microscopy

Phage display and Oncolytic Viruses: Role of AI IN THERAPEUTIC DISCOVERY

Learning Objectives:

Discuss Phage display: A powerful monoclonal antibodies discovery platform
Discuss Oncolytic Viruses and challenges in research
Discuss Artificial intelligence software’s in Therapeutic Discovery

Brief Description of the course:
Development, Current Status, and Future Directions of Phage display monoclonal antibodies, Oncolytic viruses, and the role of AI in helping direction of their therapeutic discovery

Who should attend

Graduate Students
Academicians
Researchers interested in Health and life sciences

Instructor:

Dr. Mohammed Alfaleh
Faculty of pharmacy at King Abdulaziz University

Dr Mohamed A. Alfaleh’s research interests lie in the discovery and engineering of monoclonal antibodies for research and therapeutic use. He is a pharmacist who holds a PhD degree from the University of Queensland, Australia. During his PhD, he successfully optimized a strategy for selecting membrane protein-specific monoclonal antibodies using phage display technology. Dr Alfaleh is an assistant professor in the faculty of pharmacy at King Abdulaziz University. To develop his science career, Dr Alfaleh, has joined the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Unit at King Fahd Medical Research Center, to continue working on monoclonal antibodies and biologics related technologies

Dr. Ahmed Moahmoud Baker
Cancer Immunotherapy
Assistant Professor – College of Applied Medical Sciences
Vice Dean of Scientific Research for Technical Affairs and Development
Clinical Laboratory Science Department

Summary
My long-term research interests focus on the development and improvement of immunotherapeutic strategies, including oncolytic viruses, gene therapy, cancer vaccine, and immune checkpoint inhibitors, for the treatment of several cancers and infectious diseases.

Experience

Vice-dean for central laboratories support at the Deanship of Scientific Research, Taibah University, Madinah, Saudi Arabia. (2020–present)
Director of the Science and Technology Unit at Taibah University. (2019 – 2020)
Director of The Center of Nanotechnology at Taibah University. (2019 – Present)
Assistant to the Vice Dean for Graduate Studies and Scientific Research, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Taibah University, (2019 – 2020)
Assistant to the Head of Department of Medical Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Taibah University, (2019 – 2020)
Adjunct associate scientist, Immunology Research Program, KIMARC, KSA 2019-present.
Harvard Medical School Faculty Member (part-time lecturer), Boston, MA, USA. (2018 – 2019)
Assistant professor, Taibah University, (2018 – Present)
Brigham and Women’s Hospital Research Fellow in Neurosurgery department, Boston, MA, USA (2017 – 2018).
Senior Laboratory Technician, Royal Commission Hospital, Jubail Industrial City, (2006 – 2007)
Publications: ~ 25, in prestigious journals including recent publications in Cell, Nature Communications, and Science Advances.

Education

Harvard Medical School Postdoctoral Fellowship, Immunotherapy and Oncolytic Virotherapy (2017 – 2018)
University of Ottawa Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Medical Microbiology and Immunology (2012 – 2016)
University of Ottawa Master’s degree, Medical Microbiology and Immunology (2010 – 2012)

My long-term research interests focus on the development and improvement of immunotherapeutic strategies, including oncolytic viruses, gene therapy, cancer vaccine, and immune checkpoint inhibitors, for the treatment of several cancers and infectious diseases.

Dr. Sari Sabban is a Molecular Biologist and Biotechnologist. He received his PhD from The University of Sheffield in the U.K. in 2012 where he researched molecular aspects of allergy and vaccine design. He is currently an assistant professor at King Abdulaziz University, a registered scientist at the Royal Society of Biology in the U.K., a Fulbright alumnus (Duke University), and a principal investigator in machine learning and computational structural biology.

His research interests encompass computational vaccine design and computational drug discovery, primarily an anti-IgE (immunoglobulins E) vaccine as a universal anti-allergy therapeutic (submitted for a patent). As well as anti-tumour necrosis factor alpha inhibitors. Furthermore, he is using deep learning in computational structural biology to computationally design non-natural protein structures as a way of developing more structural scaffolds that are used in computational vaccine design. He is also developing networks that can classify proteins from their physical crystal structures. Finally, he is developing datasets and works with neural networks that detect, classify, and calculates the biomasses of microscopic organisms.

RNA- Based technologies: Development, Current Status, and Future Directions

Learning Objectives:

Discuss mRNA Based Therapeutics and Vaccines development for COVID-19
Discuss mRNA-based cancer vaccine innovation and development
Discuss siRNA and micro-RNA Based Therapeutics development for cancer and other diseases

Brief Description of the course:
This course will be discussing RNA- Based technologies: Development, Current Status, and Future Directions

Who should attend

Graduate Students
Academicians
Researchers interested in Health and life sciences

Instructor:

Dr. Mashal M. Alshazi,

Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Dr. Mashal M. Alshazi, is an assistant professor of pharmaceutical biotechnology, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of pharmacy, King Saud University and Vice Director of the Infectious Diseases Vaccination Research Chair at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. During 2017-2018, Dr. Alshazi was an employer of Department of Pediatrics National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development – Product Development Partnership. During his time at Center for Vaccine Development, Dr. Alshazi participated in development of vaccines against different infectious diseases including MERS-CoV and leishmaniasis. Prior joining KSU, Dr. Alshazi was working with AstraZeneca, Infection BioScience, Boston, USA. With AstraZeneca, he worked in development of different infection models. Dr. Alshazi holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from University of Illinois, USA, and a bachelor degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from King Saud University. Dr. Alshazi is recipient of several scientific awards including Grand Challenges grant Award from Saudi Ministry of Education, Van Doren Scholar Award from University of Illinois, The American Society of Microbiology Award and RNA Society Award. Dr. Alshazi authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed articles, and supervised, co-supervised and examined a number of undergraduate and graduate students. He is a reviewer and editor for many reputable journals. He has organized conferences in the region related to vaccines and biologics with invited speakers from Europe and the United States.

Dr. Alshazi is leading a research team that focused on mRNA and protein based vaccine development, antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial drugs studies. Dr. Alshazi is working with several national and international bodies as vaccines and biologics consultant including Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) and Strategic Advisory Group (SAG), Ready2Respond.

Dr. Homood As Sobeai

Dept. of Pharmacology and Toxicology,College of Pharmacy,King Saud University,Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Dr. Homood Moqbel As Sobeai is an assistant professor at the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Dr. As Sobeai earned his bachelor’s degree from the College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, in 2009. He pursued his graduate education at Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. He was awarded his Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences, with an emphasis on molecular medicine and pharmacogenomics in 2017.

During his Ph.D., Dr. As Sobeai had been involved in several wet and dry laboratory projects. He is currently involved in several research projects, including identifying novel microRNA-based therapies to overcome DNA repair-induced-chemotherapy resistance in breast cancer.

Dr. As Sobeai has generated work that has been published in respected journals and presented at national and international scientific meetings.

Dr. Rami Alzhrani

Rami Alzhrani, PharmD, MSPS in Industrial Pharmacy, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics and Industrial Pharmacy

College of Pharmacy, Taif University,

Rami Alzhrani is an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics and Industrial Pharmacy, Taif University, Saudi Arabia. In 2020, He completed his PhD studies at Wayne State University (WSU), Detroit, USA. His research focuses on developing a variety of drug delivery systems for multiple diseases. He published more than twenty peer-reviewed and book chapters. Dr. Alzhrani received numerous awards from WSU and the University of Toledo for his outstanding academic and research performance. Dr. Alzhrani has expertise in cancer and ophthalmic drug delivery.