2012 Upcoming Meetings

The Fall/Winter 2012 conference season provides ample opportunities to attend meetings that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

2012 upcoming meetings

The Summer 2012 conference season provides ample opportunities to attend meetings that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

2012–13 Upcoming meetings

The Winter 2012–13 conference season provides ample opportunities to attend meetings that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D. Please note that Upcoming meetings lists will no longer be included in the print version of mAbs starting with the January/February 2013 issue. Please visit the mAbs home page to find an online meeting list: www.landesbioscience.com/journals/mabs/     

Determinants of the Pace of Global Innovation in Energy Technologies

Understanding the factors driving innovation in energy technologies is of critical importance to mitigating climate change and addressing other energy-related global challenges. Low levels of innovation, measured in terms of energy patent filings, were noted in the 1980s and 90s as an issue of concern and were attributed to limited investment in public and private research and development (R&D). Here we build a comprehensive global database of energy patents covering the period 1970–2009, which is unique in its temporal and geographical scope. Analysis of the data reveals a recent, marked departure from historical trends. A sharp increase in rates of patenting has occurred over the last decade, particularly in renewable technologies, despite continued low levels of R&D funding. To solve the puzzle of fast innovation despite modest R&D increases, we develop a model that explains the nonlinear response observed in the empirical data of technological innovation to various types of investment. The model reveals a regular relationship between patents, R&D funding, and growing markets across technologies, and accurately predicts patenting rates at different stages of technological maturity and market development. We show quantitatively how growing markets have formed a vital complement to public R&D in driving innovative activity. These two forms of investment have each leveraged the effect of the other in driving patenting trends over long periods of time.     

When Quality Beats Quantity: Decision Theory,Drug Discovery,and the Reproducibility Crisis

A striking contrast runs through the last 60 years of biopharmaceutical discovery, research, and development. Huge scientific and technological gains should have increased the quality of academic science and raised industrial R&D efficiency. However, academia faces a "reproducibility crisis"; inflation-adjusted industrial R&D costs per novel drug increased nearly 100 fold between 1950 and 2010; and drugs are more likely to fail in clinical development today than in the 1970s. The contrast is explicable only if powerful headwinds reversed the gains and/or if many "gains" have proved illusory. However, discussions of reproducibility and R&D productivity rarely address this point explicitly. The main objectives of the primary research in this paper are: (a) to provide quantitatively and historically plausible explanations of the contrast; and (b) identify factors to which R&D efficiency is sensitive. We present a quantitative decision-theoretic model of the R&D process. The model represents therapeutic candidates (e.g., putative drug targets, molecules in a screening library, etc.) within a “measurement space", with candidates'' positions determined by their performance on a variety of assays (e.g., binding affinity, toxicity, in vivo efficacy, etc.) whose results correlate to a greater or lesser degree. We apply decision rules to segment the space, and assess the probability of correct R&D decisions. We find that when searching for rare positives (e.g., candidates that will successfully complete clinical development), changes in the predictive validity of screening and disease models that many people working in drug discovery would regard as small and/or unknowable (i.e., an 0.1 absolute change in correlation coefficient between model output and clinical outcomes in man) can offset large (e.g., 10 fold, even 100 fold) changes in models’ brute-force efficiency. We also show how validity and reproducibility correlate across a population of simulated screening and disease models. We hypothesize that screening and disease models with high predictive validity are more likely to yield good answers and good treatments, so tend to render themselves and their diseases academically and commercially redundant. Perhaps there has also been too much enthusiasm for reductionist molecular models which have insufficient predictive validity. Thus we hypothesize that the average predictive validity of the stock of academically and industrially "interesting" screening and disease models has declined over time, with even small falls able to offset large gains in scientific knowledge and brute-force efficiency. The rate of creation of valid screening and disease models may be the major constraint on R&D productivity.     

The Scientific Impact of Developing Nations

This paper analyzes science productivity for nine developing countries. Results show that these nations are reducing their science gap, with R&D investments and scientific impact growing at more than double the rate of the developed world. But this “catching up” hides a very uneven picture among these nations, especially on what they are able to generate in terms of impact and output relative to their levels of investment and available resources. Moreover, unlike what one might expect, it is clear that the size of the nations and the relative scale of their R&D investments are not the key drivers of efficiency.     

The Effects of Research & Development Funding on Scientific Productivity: Academic Chemistry, 1990-2009

This article examines the relationship between Research & Development (R&D) funding and the production of knowledge by academic chemists. Using articles published, either raw counts or adjusted for quality, we find a strong, positive causal effect of funding on knowledge production. This effect is similar across subsets of universities, suggesting a relatively efficient allocation of R&D funds. Finally, we document a rapid acceleration in the rate at which chemical knowledge was produced in the late 1990s and early 2000s relative to the financial and human resources devoted to its production.     

Upcoming meetings

The fall conference season provides abundant opportunities to attend conferences that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions, and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

2012 upcoming meetings

The Summer 2012 conference season provides ample opportunities to attend meetings that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

Upcoming meetings

The winter conference season provides ample opportunities to attend conferences that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions, and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

Upcoming meetings

The winter/spring 2010 conference season provides ample opportunities to attend conferences that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions, and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

2010 upcoming meetings

The spring/summer 2010 conference season provides ample opportunities to attend conferences that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions, and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

2012 Upcoming Meetings

The Summer/Fall 2012 conference season provides ample opportunities to attend meetings that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

2010 upcoming meetings

The summer and fall 2010 conference seasons provide ample opportunities to attend conferences that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions, and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

2012 Upcoming Meetings

The Fall/Winter 2012 conference season provides ample opportunities to attend meetings that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D). Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.     

The Grand Convergence: Closing the Divide between Public Health Funding and Global Health Needs

The Global Health 2035 report notes that the “grand convergence”—closure of the infectious, maternal, and child mortality gap between rich and poor countries—is dependent on research and development (R&D) of new drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and other health tools. However, this convergence (and the R&D underpinning it) will first require an even more fundamental convergence of the different worlds of public health and innovation, where a largely historical gap between global health experts and innovation experts is hindering achievement of the grand convergence in health.The Global Health 2035 report notes that the “grand convergence”—closure of the infectious, maternal, and child mortality gap between rich and poor countries—is dependent on research and development (R&D) of new drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and other health tools. New tools alone are estimated to deliver a 2% decline each year in the under-5 mortality rate, maternal mortality ratio, and deaths from HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) [1].However, this convergence (and the R&D underpinning it) is unlikely unless we first have an even more fundamental convergence of the parallel worlds of public health and innovation. At the moment, these worlds are often disconnected, with major gaps to be bridged at both the intellectual and practical levels before we can truly reach a grand convergence in health.     

R&D Incentives for Neglected Diseases

Neglected diseases are typically characterized as those for which adequate drug treatment is lacking, and the potential return on effort in research and development (R&D), to produce new therapies, is too small for companies to invest significant resources in the field. In recent years various incentives schemes to stimulate R&D by pharmaceutical firms have been considered. Broadly speaking, these can be classified either as ‘push’ or ‘pull’ programs. Hybrid options, that include push and pull incentives, have also become increasingly popular. Supporters and critics of these various incentive schemes have argued in favor of their relative merits and limitations, although the view that no mechanism is a perfect fit for all situations appears to be widely held. For this reason, the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches has been important for policy decisions, but is dispersed in a variety of sources. With this in mind, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the economic determinants behind R&D investments for neglected diseases by comparing the relative strength of different incentive schemes within a simple economic model, based on the assumption of profit maximizing firms. The analysis suggests that co-funded push programs are generally more efficient than pure pull programs. However, by setting appropriate intermediate goals hybrid incentive schemes could further improve efficiency.     

Impact of GDP,Spending on R&D,Number of Universities and Scientific Journals on Research Publications among Asian Countries

Objectives

This study aimed to compare the impact of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, spending on Research and Development (R&D), number of universities, and Indexed Scientific Journals on total number of research documents (papers), citations per document and Hirsch index (H-index) in various science and social science subjects among Asian countries.

Materials and Methods

In this study, 40 Asian countries were included. The information regarding Asian countries, their GDP per capita, spending on R&D, total number of universities and indexed scientific journals were collected. We recorded the bibliometric indicators, including total number of research documents, citations per document and H-index in various science and social sciences subjects during the period 1996–2011. The main sources for information were World Bank, SCI-mago/Scopus and Web of Science; Thomson Reuters.

Results

The mean per capita GDP for all the Asian countries is 14448.31±2854.40 US$, yearly per capita spending on R&D 0.64±0.16 US$, number of universities 72.37±18.32 and mean number of ISI indexed journal per country is 17.97±7.35. The mean of research documents published in various science and social science subjects among all the Asian countries during the period 1996–2011 is 158086.92±69204.09; citations per document 8.67±0.48; and H-index 122.8±19.21. Spending on R&D, number of universities and indexed journals have a positive correlation with number of published documents, citations per document and H-index in various science and social science subjects. However, there was no association between the per capita GDP and research outcomes.

Conclusion

The Asian countries who spend more on R&D have a large number of universities and scientific indexed journals produced more in research outcomes including total number of research publication, citations per documents and H-index in various science and social science subjects.     

Are Patents Impeding Medical Care and Innovation?

Background to the debate: Pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers argue that the current patent system is crucial for stimulating research and development (R&D), leading to new products that improve medical care. The financial return on their investments that is afforded by patent protection, they claim, is an incentive toward innovation and reinvestment into further R&D. But this view has been challenged in recent years. Many commentators argue that patents are stifling biomedical research, for example by preventing researchers from accessing patented materials or methods they need for their studies. Patents have also been blamed for impeding medical care by raising prices of essential medicines, such as antiretroviral drugs, in poor countries. This debate examines whether and how patents are impeding health care and innovation.     

Upcoming meetings

The spring meeting season is gearing up, and numerous conferences that feature topics relevant to antibody research and development (R&D) will be held during March, April and May 2009. Meetings such as these serve critical informational and educational functions, and are key networking opportunities. Locations are spread throughout the world, reflecting the global nature of antibody R&D.