Conference Reports
37th Annual Meeting for the Society for Neuroscience, 3rd-7th November 2007, San Diego, CA, USA.
Not even the recent wildfires in San Diego County could keep the 31,400 delegates away from this year's Annual Meeting for the Society for Neuroscience. Attendees flocked from all over the globe to San Diego's imposing convention centre to share and view the research which is so necessary in order to lay the foundations for greater scientific understanding of psychiatric and neurological disorders that often afflict millions of people worldwide. This in turn is essential for the eventual provision of new and more efficacious pharmacological treatments for these conditions.
With over 16,400 presentations in the various forms of poster sessions, symposia and lectures, this year's meeting provided ample opportunity for representatives from the pharmaceutical, academic and medical backgrounds to come together to both display and discuss their burning desire for the latest emerging research in the neuroscience world.
Hot topics this year included depression and anxiety. Information on 3 products in this area new to Pharmaprojects included AA-29504, a retigabine analogue under development by Lundbeck, YP-20, a peptidergic CRF antagonist under development by AstraZeneca and finally Taisho is investigating MCH-1 antagonists. In the case of AstraZeneca's YP-20, it was found to significantly antagonise restraint-stress-induced ACTH in male SD rats and reversed CRF-medicated cAMP accumulation in cerebellar neurones. The diversity of these mechanisms reflects the growing need to develop novel antidepressants pharmacologically distinct from the SSRIs and benzodiazepines of the past.
Servier reported positive data on S-18986, the lead in its AMPAkine series, which is indicated for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. In preclinical trials, results showed that it increased total arm entries in the Y-Maze spatial memory task by 80%. Memory Pharmaceuticals was another company reporting on Alzheimer's disease therapies; in one of its posters concerning its late-stage compound MEM-1003, which it licensed from Bayer, the neuronal calcium channel modulator was shown to decrease the number of trials needed to shift cognitive set in aged rats, restoring performance to that seen in young rats in preclinical trials. It is currently in Phase IIa trials in the US.
Interesting data was presented by AmKor Pharma on its antioxidant Neu-2000. Although primarily in development for stroke and cardiac arrest, the results presented suggest it may have potential in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS; Lou Gehrig's disease), a progressive degenerative disorder linked to mutation of the gene (SOD1) for superoxide dismutase, which affects more than 5000 Americans a year. With only Sanofi-Aventis' riluzole currently lauched for this indication, there is an unmet need for newer, more effective drugs in this field. Neu-2000 was found to prevent production of free radicals and degeneration of spinal motor neurones in ALS mice as well as improving motor neurone function and survival in G93A mice.
This year's conference not only provided attendees with the knowledge and networking opportunities which are so crucial in the translation of laboratory-based research into tangible and effective new drugs to treat often very complicated and elusive diseases, but also provided the city with an estimated US$120 million in local business revenue, highlighting the beneficial local impact such conferences can have in addition to the more far reaching global consequences.
The 38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience will take place in Washington DC, USA, 15th-19th November 2008.
Sophie Green
Pharmaprojects Analyst
Image courtesy of:www.freedigitalphotos.net
