June 29th, 2009

8:00 am – Registration and Breakfast

8:50 am – Welcome & Opening Remarks
TBA
Aurora Biomed

Session 1: Ion Channels as Disease Targets

8:55 am – Chairperson’s Remarks
Georg Terstappen    
Chief Scientific Officer
Siena Biotech S.p.A.

9:00 am - WYE103914/SEN34625 is a novel alpha7 nAChR agonist with pro-cognitive and neuroprotective properties
Georg Terstappen    
Chief Scientific Officer
Siena Biotech S.p.A.

9:30 am - KCa3.1 and KCa2.3 activators for the treatment of hypertension
Heike Wulff 
Associate Professor
University of California

10:00 am - Experimental and modeling studies of the block of Kv1.5 potassium channels by vernakalant
David Fedida          
Professor and Associate Head; Associate Dean, Research;   
University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine; Dept. Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics
Consultant – Cardiome

10:30 am – Coffee Break

10:50 am - Targeting natural killer cell potassium channels for selective immunomodulation
Christine Beeton     
Assistant Professor
Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas)

11:20 am - Discovery of M2 Antagonists for New Antiviral drugs
Zhiyuan Li  
Investigator 
Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China

11:50 pm - TMEM16A Protein as a novel Chloride Channel
Luis Galietta
Senior Investigator
Gaslini Institute, Genova, Italy

12:20 pm – Lunch - Sponsored by Sophion

Session 2: Ion Channels as Pain Targets

1:25 pm – Chairperson’s Remarks
Andreas Jeromin    
Manager      
Allen Institute for Brain Science        

1:30 pm – Assay dependent activity of the sodium channel gating modifiers protoxin-I and protoxin-II: implications for sodium channel drug discovery        
Alan Wickenden      
Research Fellow      
Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development

2:00 pm - Single-molecule tracking and total-internal reflectance microscopy to monitor the membrane dynamics and organization of Kv4.2
Andreas Jeromin      
Manager       
Allen Institute for Brain Science

Session 3: TRP Ion Channels – Regulation & Links to Pain & Disease

2:30 pm – Chairperson’s Remarks
Wei Zheng    
Group leader, Cellular signalling assays          
NIH

2:35 pm - Trafficking of TRPV4 ion channels in over-expression systems.
Roger O'Neil
Professor and Vice-Chair
Department of Integrative Biology & Pharmacology; University of Texas Health Science Center

3:05 pm – Coffee Break

3:25 pm - Mechanism of regulation by calcium in TRPV ion channels
Sharona E. Gordon
Associate Professor,
Department of Physiology and Biophysics,
University of Washington

3:55 pm - Cancer cells through the TRPV6 channel with our peptide technology   
John "Jack" Stewart
Chief Scientific Officer
BioProspecting NB Inc.

June 30th, 2009

8:00 am – Breakfast

Session 4: Ion Channel Screening Technologies

8:30 am – Chairperson’s Remarks
Gregory Kaczorowski           
Adjunct Professor - University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey;
Adjunct Professor - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

8:35 am - The Challenges of Screening for Ion Channel Drug Leads – Case Histories       
Gregory Kaczorowski           
Adjunct Professor - University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey;
Adjunct Professor - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

9:05 am – Global Ion Channel Initiative
Michael Dabrowski   
Associate Principal Scientist  
AstraZeneca CNS&Pain Local Discovery Södertälje

9:35 am - A Homogenous Thallium Flux Assay for High Throughput Screening of Potassium Channels
Wei Zheng    
Group leader, Cellular signalling assays          
NIH  

10:05 am – Coffee Break          

10:25 am – Positive allosteric interaction of structurally diverse T-type calcium channel antagonists detected by high throughput methods
Victor Uebele        
Senior Research Fellow      
Merck

10:55 am - ASIC Channel Screening Technology
Sikander Gill
Director of Assay Development
Aurora Biomed Inc.  

11:25 am – Validation of Ligand-gated Ion Channel Applications on QPatch HTX
Søren Friis            
Investigator
Sophion Bioscience A/S Denmark

11:55 am – Activators of a taste cell ion channel identified using IonWorks® screening
Bryan Moyer
Associate Director, Ion Channel Biology,
Senomyx, Inc.

12:25 pm – Lunch

1:30 pm - Pluripotent Stem Cell-derived Cardiomyocytes as Suitable Substrates For Automated Ion Channel and Electrophysiological Analysis Systems
Ralf Kettenhofen
Senior Scientist
Axiogenesis AG

Session 5: New Horizons in Life Sciences

2:00 pm – Chairperson’s Remarks
Craig T. January                   
Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Co-founder - Cellular Dynamics

2:05 pm - Profiling of ion channels and synaptic proteins in human brain - Expanding our window on genetic variation
Richard McCombie   
Professor     
CSHL            

2:35 pm - Human Embryonic Stem Cells Provide a Robust Source of Neural Cells for Drug Discovery and Toxicity
Steve Stice
Director
Regenerative Bioscience Center, ADS Rhodes Complex, University of Georgia

3:05 pm - Coffee & Tea

3:25 pm - Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes – Progress and Applications
Tim Kamp
Professor of Medicine and Physiology, University of Wisconsin
Co-Founder – Cellular Dynamics International

3:55 pm – Standardizing hESC and hiPSC Research
Clive Glover 
Product Manager - Pluripotent Stem Cell Biology        
Stemcell Technologies Inc

5:15 pm – Meet in Marriott lobby for boat cruise

5:30-9:00 pm – Boat cruise sponsored by Millipore.

July 1st, 2009 – Happy Canada Day!

8:00 am – Coffee & Tea

Session 6: Safety Pharmacology

8:30 am – Chairperson’s Remarks
Bernard Fermini       
Associate Director     
Global Safety Pharmacology, DSRD, Pfizer

8:35 am - hERG potassium channels, drug effects on their trafficking within cells and expression studies of mutant channels in cardiac myocytes
Craig T. January                   
Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Co-founder - Cellular Dynamics                      

9:05 am - Translation of ion channel data between in vitro, in vivo, and clinical ECG outcome. Moving beyond hERG, and QT prolongation
Bernard Fermini       
Associate Director     
Global Safety Pharmacology, DSRD, Pfizer

9:35 am - In vitro profiling against ion channels beyond hERG as an early indicator of cardiac risk
Stephen Hess           
Senior R&D Director, Cell Based Assays   
Millipore

10:05 am – Coffee & Tea & Snacks

10:25 am - Correlation of an in-silico model for the prediction of HERG-liabilities to electrophysiological investigations: Cases from a Histamine H3-receptor antagonist program
Clemens Möller
Team Leader, Electrophysiology
Evotec AG

10:55 am - Real-time detection of calcium ion channel events of single cells for drug efficacy and cardiac toxicity evaluations
Paul Li        
Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry & Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Simon Fraser University

Session 7: Structure & Function of Ion Channels

11:25 am – Chairperson’s Remarks
Michael Dabrowski
Associate Principal Scientist           
AstraZeneca CNS&Pain Local Discovery Södertälje

11:30 am - CaV2 Channels - Distinct strategies for excitation-transcription coupling engaged by
specific Ca2+ channel types       
Damian Wheeler     
Post-Doctoral Fellow           
Stanford University

12:00 pm – Lunch

1:00 pm - Cardiac ryanodine receptor ion channel (RyR2) and its regulation by calmodulin
Gerhard Meissner     
Professor     
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

1:30 pm - CLC Chloride Channel Inhibitors
Merritt Maduke         
Assistant Professor
Stanford University School of Medicine

2:00 pm – Chronic nicotine cell specifically upregulates alpha4* nicotinic receptors: basis for tolerance in the midbrain and enhanced synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus
Raad Nashmi          
Assistant Professor
University of Victoria

2:30 pm – Closing remarks
Dong Liang
CEO
Aurora Biomed Inc.