Eric Parker, Sr. Director, Merck to speak at Neurodegeneration event Sept 22-23 2011, San Francisco

MONROVIA, CA, June 16, 2011 (Press-News.org) Eric Parker, Senior Director and Site Lead, Neuroscience at Merck will give a featured presentation on "Getting to First BACE: Development of BACE Inhibitors for the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease" at the 5th Neurodegenerative Conditions Research and Development Conference to be held in San Francisco, CA on September 22-23, 2011 by GTC.

Eric Parker will review the development of the first small molecule BACE inhibitors, with a particular focus on the efficacy and potential for mechanism-based side effects associated with this approach.

Benefits of Eric Parker's presentation:
• Chronicles the steps involved in the development of the first potent, small molecule inhibitors of BACE.
• Highlights the importance of close collaboration between chemists, structural biologists, pharmacologists, DMPK, etc. in protease inhibitor drug development.
• Describes a large body of internal work aimed at assessing potential mechanism-based side effects of BACE inhibition, including addressing several literature reports describing various phenotypes of BACE1 and BACE2 knockout mice.

Eric M. Parker oversees all neuroscience drug discovery efforts at the Merck Kenilworth, NJ site. Dr. Parker has more than 20 years of experience in drug discovery and development in the areas of neurodegenerative disease, psychiatric disease, pain, obesity/metabolic disease, oncology and urology. Prior to joining MRL in 2009, Dr. Parker worked at the Schering-Plough Research Institute and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. He has published over 75 scientific articles and lectures extensively on the work of his group.

The 5th Neurodegenerative Conditions Research and Development Conference will discuss the latest breakthroughs, new drug targets, new models, the development of new biomarkers, imaging modalities, and several other novel developments and therapeutics to combat neurodegenerative conditions.

The sessions for the conferences are:
Plenary Keynote Session
Session I: Biomarkers: Translation from Discovery to Clinical
Session II: Novel Therapeutic Targets and Approaches in Neurodegenerative Condition
Session III: Stem Cell Therapy in CNS
Session IV: Case Studies in the Preclinical and Clinical Space
Session V: Novel Therapeutic Targets and Approaches in Alzheimer's Disease
Session VI: Protein Misfolding and Aggregation

For more information, please visit http://www.gtcbio.com

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