ESACT Discovery and Development of Novel Therapeutics Course 2022, 6th Edition

ESACT offers an introductory course to the discovery and development of novel therapeutics. The content is spanning from small molecular weight drugs to biologics, including cellular and gene therapeutic products The course is planned in an intensive 4-day schedule with the number of participants limited to 30 in order to facilitate the interaction among them and with the lecturers. Lecturers will stay for the entire course duration. A limited number of grants, covering the course fee (not travel cost), are provided by ESACT. Applicants to the grants should indicate it in the course application, together with a motivation statement. Priority will be given to young Ph.D. students from academia. The course will cover the following topics:

• Overview: From disease to target
• Characteristics and main approaches to the development of drug types: Small molecular weight compounds, protein biologics, gene therapeutics, cell therapeutics
• Assay development: Biochemical assays, assay development using cells, organoids and animals
• Discovery of new small molecular weight drugs
• Preclinical development of cell and gene therapy products
• Outlook: Next steps towards clinics

Confirmed lecturers: Catarina Brito (IBET, Portugal), Hansjörg Hauser (HZI, Germany), Carsten Pieck (Merck, Germany), Nikunj Somia (University of Minnesota, USA), Heinz Ruffner (Novartis, Switzerland), Wolfgang Sommergruber (University of Applied Sciences, Austria).

Find out more and register.