By David Li and Dongyu Chen, bostonese.com
The 2013 annual conference of Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association New England (SAPA-NE) was successfully held on May 25 at MIT. The day-long event attracted close to 500 attendees. It started with lectures at the Wang Auditorium at the Sloan School, and ended with a banquet at the Walker Memorial Morse Hall just a few blocks away in MIT campus. Board members of SAPA-NE also shared a birthday cake to celebrate SAPA-NE’s 15th birthday at end of the banquet.
SAPA-NE president Dr. Liqiang Tou (left) and president-elect Dr. Qingcong Lin (right) handed out awards at the evening banquet.
|
|
The theme of the conference is “Scientific Innovation and Technological Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Drug R&D”. 2011 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Bruce Beutler was among many distinguished speakers. Dr. Beutler, a professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, delivered keynote speech with the title “Using Genetics to Decipher Immunity”. He was introduced by Dr He Zhou who worked with him as a post doctoral researcher. Dr. Zhou flew all the way from Shanghai, China to Boston, USA for this conference and to share her joy of having Dr. Beutler there with us. |
Dr. Beutler keynote speech focused on his fundamental research and the association of gene mutation with human disease diagnosis. He started his talk with the data of people’s average lifespan of UK (2000), Mozambique (2000), Liverpool (1860) as well as in ancient times. It showed that people who live in age/area where there’s no access to good medical care could die at very young age, especially those with infectious diseases.
As you may know, there are connections between gene mutation and diseases. If the mutated gene could be found, it would surely provide guidance for treatment, since different gene mutations could contribute to the development of one disease. To address the mutation-disease connections, a tool called “Forward Genetics” was introduced. The main idea was to make mutations at random to create differences that we can see by eyes and search back to see which gene mutation caused this change.
|
|
Dr. Beutler introduced the way that mice were mutated and mated to make mutations in their offspring; a research method was also created to map gene mutations very quickly, providing an unbiased, robust tool for gene diagnosis. By explaining detailed research data and by introducing 5 mutation associated diseases in mouse model as examples, his ideas were generally understood.
“It was a really good chance to learn from the Nobel Prize winner. He showed us an unbiased, scientific way of doing research which can be applied to our daily work,” said a graduate student from China who joined SAPA-NE recently. |
Other speakers included Dr. Steven Projan, SVP, AstraZeneca, Dr. Will Somers, VP of Global Biotherapeutic Technologies, Pfizer, Dr. Brigitta Tadmor, VP, Novartis, Dr. Philip J. Vickers, Head of R&D, Shire, and Dr. Michael Vincent, VP, Pfizer.
Dr. Qingcong Lin, conference chair and SAPA-NE president-elect, mentioned that preparation for the annual conference started almost a year ago. “It is really a great team effort. We have more than 30 logistic teams to be led by AC, EC or coordinators. Dr Haishan Li helped buy and service Breakfast with other coordinator members and did fantastic job,” said Dr. Lin.
Dr. Lin also thanked the speakers and panelists. “They are the best professionals who demonstrated to our members their passions with science and drug R&D, shared their great visions and insights with us too. All vendors were so happy joining us this year and many of them reserved their spots with me to come back next year. As Dr Wong said ‘SAPA is the best.’ Most of appreciation goes to our members who service others without their name in any of our programs. They are truly the best and they are the reason for SAPA being the best.”