Genomic support for target selection and validation in drug development: design of a new genotyping array

Supported by:

22 November 2015

Drug target validation is a major obstacle to drug development leading to high rates of late-stage failure because the pivotal study in drug development – the randomised trial – occurs at the end of the development pipeline.

Genetic studies using the principle of Mendelian randomisation reproduce the key elements of a randomised trial ensuring target validation can take place earlier in development.

A second major obstacle in the drug-development is the understanding of individual differences in drug efficacy and safety due to naturally occurring variation in genes encoding proteins involved in drug disposition – a key component of stratified medicines research.

The Illumina Drug Development Array is designed to address issues and enable genomic discoveries to be used in drug development.

The array combines the genome-wide tag SNP content of the Illumina Human Core BeadChip (240,000 highly-informative genome-wide tag SNPs and over 20,000 high-value markers) with a novel 200,000 custom marker set designed to support studies of drug target validation and treatment response. The array is relevant to full range of human drug targets and medical disorders.

The webinar will:

• Introduce the concept of Mendelian randomisation studies for target selection and validation in drug development
• Discuss the concept of the ‘druggability’ and the ‘druggable genome’
• Describe development of the content of the Illumina drug development array based on an updated set of genes encoding druggable targets and the proteins involved in in drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME)

Keynote speakers

Prof. Aroon Hingorani
Chair of Genetic Epidemiology
Institute of Cardiovascular Science, University College London

Prof. Aroon Hingorani discusses Mendelian randomisation and its application for drug target selection and validation. Aroon obtained his medical degree in Oxford and London with specialist training in Clinical Pharmacology and General (Internal) Medicine. He completed a PhD in Cambridge before undertaking research at UCL as British Heart Foundation. He is currently UCL Chair of Genetic Epidemiology and Honorary Consultant at UCL Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. His research applies genomic data to help identify new drug targets for heart disease prevention and treatment. Together with colleagues he runs a specialist blood pressure clinic for patients with cardiovascular and general medical problems. He has been the Director of UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science since 2011. 

Prof. John Overington
Visiting Professor of Computational Chemical Biology
Institute of Cardiovascular Science, University College London

Prof. John Overington discusses the concept of druggability and therapeutic targets. John completed PhD studies in Crystallography at Birkbeck College, University of London in 1991, working on protein modelling and sequence template bioinformatic methods development. Since then, John has held a number of positions in large Pharma and Biotech sectors, and was Team Leader for the Computational Chemical Biology at the EBI from 2008-2015, leading the development of ChEMBL a database of bioactive drug-like small molecules and biotherapeutics.

Dr. Anna Gaulton
Senior Data Integration and Development Officer – ChEMBL
European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton

Dr. Anna Gaulton discusses the concept of the druggable genome and development of marker content for the drug development array. Anna holds a degree in Biochemistry and a PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Manchester. Following this, she worked for five years in the Computational Biology group at Pfizer, developing tools and databases to support drug discovery research scientists in tasks such as target identification and prioritisation. She joined the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute in 2009 as a member of the newly-formed Chemogenomics Team, where she is responsible for development of the ChEMBL database.