Highlights from Bioinsider’s Therapeutic Pipeline for COVID-19 Virtual Meeting
On September 17, appropriately distanced scientists from academia and biotech convened in a virtual forum to learn about the latest preclinical and clinical approaches for effective therapeutics against COVID-19. Here are some of the highlights.
The Therapeutic Pipeline for COVID-19 meeting was the second in Bioinsider’s ‘Together as One’ COVID-19 Virtual Meeting Series. It brought together more than 100 researchers and featured 11 keynote presentations focused on small-molecule and antibody-based approaches. The meeting also hosted a special gathering for virtual speed networking and three intimate breakout discussions on 1) drug repurposing; 2) realistic and manageable drug treatment; and 3) vaccines or anti-virals for COVID-19.
Big pharma has been making a lot of headlines around developing COVID-19 treatments. However, it’s biotech companies and academic labs that are driving innovation in the life-science and healthcare industries. The Therapeutic Pipeline for COVID-19 Virtual Meeting featured topics and discussions relevant to those small and emerging biotech and academic labs researching solutions for COVID-19 treatments.
We covered a lot of ground in this meeting, and the Bioinsider team is incredibly appreciative of the time our speakers and moderators dedicated to make this event such a success. The entire program is now available for streaming on our Vimeo page. , and you can read more about the event on BioSpace.
With such a talented and expert presenting team engaged for more than four hours, the insights, predictions and recommendations were plentiful, but here are some of the highlights.
COVID-19 will most likely be a major problem in the near future (i.e. beyond 2021)
First-generation vaccines will not sufficiently provide effective coverage to eliminate COVID-19 and, hence, therapeutics will be vital. Early vaccines will most likely be FDA-approved with as low as 50% efficacy. Therefore, complete population coverage will be unfeasible. Therapeutics will be impactful in these three key areas.
1. For patients that develop severe symptoms, therapeutics will be required.
2. Therapeutics will deliver the most benefit when used as pre-exposure prophylactics.
3. Post-COVID-19 symptoms in recovered patients will require targeted therapeutics.
Antibodies will dominate but small-molecule approaches will be necessary
Speakers discussed how they have shifted their laboratory research and how, through strategic biotech partnerships, they have developed effective antibodies at incredible speed. The antibodies currently with the best preclinical and clinical efficacy are exclusively designed to target a specific area of the COVID-19 spike protein important for receptor binding. However, recent advances in studying the underlying biology of COVID-19 and the pathophysiological impact have shown that there are very promising targets against host cells that can be developed as small peptides or molecules.
Looking into the future
There is increasing interest in additional non-structural COVID-19 proteins that play roles in infection and evasion of the immune response. Antibodies, small molecules and emerging therapeutics (nanobodies, siRNA/oligomers, interferons/biologics) are all important in this area. However, the pillars of pharmacology (PK, binding, ADME) must be maintained during development in order to not-rush early promising therapeutics.
It’s time to register for the third virtual meeting in our series
Don’t forget that this is the second of our four-part series! Up next is the third episode: Vaccine Development and Distribution for COVID-19. If you’d like to be notified as soon as it gets scheduled, you can pre-register here.
In the meantime, here are some of the kind and thoughtful comments we received from our speakers and attendees.
“All the speakers were great at the Therapeutic Pipeline for COVID-19 Virtual Meeting! It was very informative, and I learned a lot.”
—Marco Schito, PhD, Executive Director, CURE Drug Repurposing Collaboratory
“It was a great meeting. I found it interesting and useful which I certainly don’t say about all meetings! Appreciate being included as a chairperson and a speaker on this event.”
—Daniel Chen, MD, PhD, CMO, IGM Biosciences
“This meeting was very well run and easy to navigate. I really appreciate the personal touch to the meeting from Bioinsider. The organizer was like the master of ceremonies, which made it different from many other meetings I've attended.
—Aaron K. Sato, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, Biopharma, Twist Bioscience
“Job well done! It is amazing to see a start-up can organize this level of conference with all impressive speakers and valuable content. Bioinsider indeed pursues world-class professionalism in their events. The Therapeutic Pipeline for COVID-19 Virtual Meeting was excellent and ran smoothly. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to learn many things to encourage and augment my fight against COVID-19! Looking forward to attending future meetings!”
—Jaehan Park, CEO, NAUGEN Inc.
“Thank you for arranging an amazing virtual meeting on Therapeutics for COVID-19. I had a great time learning different and new ideas from all of the speakers and their discussions. The whole program, even though it was virtual, went really smoothly, making the experience worthwhile. I am looking forward to future events!”
—Nikhita Gogate, PhD Candidate, Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, The George Washington University
