Vice President at Johnson and Johnson to speak at Modern Drug Summit Oct 19-21 2011 in San Diego, CA

MONROVIA, CA, September 01, 2011 (Press-News.org) William R. Strohl, Vice President of Biologics Research at Johnson & Johnson, will give a plenary keynote presentation on "The Future of Antibodies and Antibody-Like Protein Therapeutics" at the 7th Modern Drug Discovery and Development Summit to be held in San Diego, CA on October 19-21, 2011 by GTC.

Since 2001, monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) and Fc fusion proteins (FcFPs) have gone from being specialty drugs to major growth drivers in the pharmaceutical industry. In 2001, the market for MAbs and FcFPs was ~$3B, whereas today it is $51B with seven MAbs and FcFPs _$3B annually. With 36 MAbs and FcFPs currently marketed and another 35 in Phase III clinical trials, the market is expected to grow to $75-90B by 2015, not even accounting for the potential expansion into new markets. The future for MAbs and FcFPs, however, faces many challenges including: (i) five or more companies competing on each of the top 16 targets; (ii) the low rate of identification and validation of novel targets; (iii) increased pricing pressures from governments and third-party payors; (iv) increased competition from follow-on biologics; and (iv) the rising costs for discovery and development. Moreover, the technologies to make human MAbs and FcFPs are becoming commoditized, so the barriers to entry are decreasing, which should increase competition further. Many companies are responding to these challenges by increasing efforts to develop Fc engineered MAbs, bispecific MAbs, tissue-targeted MAbs, and single-drug MAb combinations. How companies respond to these challenges in the next 3-5 years will spell out the future up to 2025.

William R. Strohl moved to Merck in 1997 to head up Natural Products Microbiology, which he did for 4 years before being asked to start a new department in the field of recombinant monoclonal antibodies. From 2001 to 2008, Dr. Strohl was a leader in Merck's efforts to develop therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, as well as in-licensing of therapeutic targets and technologies associated with monoclonal antibodies. As part of this effort, Dr. Strohl was the scientific leader in the acquisition and integration of Abmaxis and GlycoFi into the Merck Biologics organization. In April, 2008, Dr. Strohl was named leader of Antibody Drug Discovery at Centocor (J&J). Concomitant with the evolution of Biologics at Johnson & Johnson to serve additional therapeutic areas beyond Immunology and Oncology, Dr. Strohl was recently named as VP and Head, Biologics Research, in the J&J Biotechnology Center of Excellence. Dr. Strohl has over 100 publications and several patents, has edited two books, and is currently writing a book entitled "Therapeutic Antibody Engineering: Current and Future Advances Driving the Strongest Growth Area in the Pharma Industry" to be published in spring, 2012.

The 7th Modern Drug Discovery and Development Summit will bring researchers, lab directors/managers, and industry executives the critical scientific, technology, and business coverage that they need. M3D will offer an in-depth examination of the challenges involved in the dynamic and ever-changing field of drug discovery and development. Over 125 leading industrial and academic experts will present at this three-day summit and is comprised of a half day plenary keynote session and 4 full conferences. The M3D Summit includes the following conferences:

5th Biomarker Discovery and Development
5th Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry
5th Advances in Stem Cell Discovery and Development
4th Protein Discovery & Therapeutics

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

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