IBC’s 23rd Annual Antibody Engineering, 10th Annual Antibody Therapeutics International Conferences and the 2012 Annual Meeting of The Antibody Society

The 23rd Annual Antibody Engineering, 10th Annual Antibody Therapeutics international conferences, and the 2012 Annual Meeting of The Antibody Society, organized by IBC Life Sciences with contributions from The Antibody Society and two Scientific Advisory Boards, were held December 3–6, 2012 in San Diego, CA. The meeting drew over 800 participants who attended sessions on a wide variety of topics relevant to antibody research and development. As a prelude to the main events, a pre-conference workshop held on December 2, 2012 focused on intellectual property issues that impact antibody engineering. The Antibody Engineering Conference was composed of six sessions held December 3–5, 2012: (1) From Receptor Biology to Therapy; (2) Antibodies in a Complex Environment; (3) Antibody Targeted CNS Therapy: Beyond the Blood Brain Barrier; (4) Deep Sequencing in B Cell Biology and Antibody Libraries; (5) Systems Medicine in the Development of Antibody Therapies/Systematic Validation of Novel Antibody Targets; and (6) Antibody Activity and Animal Models. The Antibody Therapeutics conference comprised four sessions held December 4–5, 2012: (1) Clinical and Preclinical Updates of Antibody-Drug Conjugates; (2) Multifunctional Antibodies and Antibody Combinations: Clinical Focus; (3) Development Status of Immunomodulatory Therapeutic Antibodies; and (4) Modulating the Half-Life of Antibody Therapeutics. The Antibody Society’s special session on applications for recording and sharing data based on GIATE was held on December 5, 2012, and the conferences concluded with two combined sessions on December 5–6, 2012: (1) Development Status of Early Stage Therapeutic Antibodies; and (2) Immunomodulatory Antibodies for Cancer Therapy.     

Passive transdermal systems whitepaper incorporating current chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) development principles

In this whitepaper, the Manufacturing Technical Committee (MTC) of the Product Quality Research Institute has updated the 1997 Transdermal Drug Delivery Systems Scale-Up and Post Approval Change workshop report findings to add important new product development and control principles. Important topics reviewed include ICH harmonization, quality by design, process analytical technologies, product and process validation, improvements to control of critical excipients, and discussion of Food and Drug Administration's Guidance on Residual Drug in Transdermal and Related Drug Delivery Systems as well as current thinking and trends on in vitro-in vivo correlation considerations for transdermal systems.     

Books

Construction Ecology: Nature as the Basis for Green Buildings, edited by Charles J. Kibert, Jan Sendzimir, and G. Bradley Guy.
Sustainable Construction: Green Building Design and Delivery, by Charles J. Kibert     

The rise of translational bioinformatics

ABSTRACT: A report on the 20th International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), held at Long Beach, California, USA, July 15-17, 2012.     

Structure and surface energy of the surfactant layer on the alveolar surface: inaccuracies and their correction

The article of Kashchiev and Exerowa (Eur Biophys J 30:34-41) is shown to incorporate a number of inaccuracies that fit the categories "historical", "anatomical", and "biophysical". These inaccuracies are corrected by reference to published research reports from 1978 to 1998. The monolayer-bilayer model proposed by Kashchiev and Exerowa may be thermodynamically correct in vitro, but has not been related to the structure of the alveolar surface in vivo, which is that of a foam ("the alveolar surface network").     

Meeting Report: "Metagenomics, Metadata and Meta-analysis" (M3) Special Interest Group at ISMB 2009

This report summarizes the proceedings of the "Metagenomics, Metadata and Meta-analysis" (M3) Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting held at the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology 2009 conference. The Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) hosted this meeting to explore the bottlenecks and emerging solutions for obtaining biological insights through large-scale comparative analysis of metagenomic datasets. The M3 SIG included 16 talks, half of which were selected from submitted abstracts, a poster session and a panel discussion involving members of the GSC Board. This report summarizes this one-day SIG, attempts to identify shared themes and recapitulates community recommendations for the future of this field. The GSC will also host an M3 workshop at the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) in January 2010. Further information about the GSC and its range of activities can be found at http://gensc.org/.     

Challenges in experimental data integration within genome-scale metabolic models

A report of the meeting "Challenges in experimental data integration within genome-scale metabolic models", Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris, October 10-11 2009, organized by the CNRS-MPG joint program in Systems Biology.     

Morphologic evidence of poxvirus in "tattoo" lesions from captive bottlenosed dolphins.

Skin lesions known as "tattoos", were observed in several captive Atlantic bottlenosed dolphins (tursiops truncatus) maintained at the Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, California. Biopsy of typical lesions and subsequent ultrastructural examination revealed intracytoplasmic particles with poxvirus morphology.     

Hybrid neural systems for pattern recognition in artificial noses

This work examines the use of Hybrid Intelligent Systems in the pattern recognition system of an artificial nose. The connectionist approaches Multi-Layer Perceptron and Time Delay Neural Networks, and the hybrid approaches Feature-Weighted Detector and Evolving Neural Fuzzy Networks were investigated. A Wavelet Filter is evaluated as a preprocessing method for odor signals. The signals generated by an artificial nose were composed by an array of conducting polymer sensors and exposed to two different odor databases.     

Understanding biology through intelligent systems

A report on the Tenth International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), Edmonton, Canada, 3-7 August 2002.     

Putting the 'bio' into bioinformatics

A report on the 13th Annual Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), Detroit, USA, 25-29 June 2005.     

An international showcase of bioinformatics research

A report on the 11th International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 29 June - 3 July 2003.     

The intelligence in developing systems for molecular biology

A report on the 14th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), Fortaleza, Brazil, 6-10 August 2006.     

Conquering computational challenges of omics data and post-ENCODE paradigms

A report on the 21st Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) and 12th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB), held in Berlin, Germany, July 21-23, 2013.     

An illuminated view of molecular biology

A report on the 18th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) and the 7th Special Interest Group meeting on Alternative Splicing, Boston, USA, 9-13 July 2010.     

Acres of antibodies: the future of recombinant biomolecule production?

The Cambridge Healthtech Institute's second international conference entitled "Recombinant Therapeutics: Antibodies and Biomolecules" was held in Baltimore, MD, USA, 30 May-1 June 2001.     

Systematic synthesis of four epicatechin series procyanidin trimers and their inhibitory activity on the Maillard reaction and antioxidant activity

A systematic synthesis of four natural epicatechin series procyanidin trimers [[4,8:4",8"]-2,3-cis-3,4-trans: 2",3"-cis-3",4"-trans: 2,3-trans-(-)-epi-catechin-(-)-epicatechin-(+)-catechin, [4,8:4",8"]-2,3-cis-3,4-trans: 2",3"-cis-3",4"-trans: 2,3-cis-tri-(-)-epicatechin: procyanidin C1, [4,8:4",8"]-2,3-cis-3,4-trans: 2",3"-trans-3",4"-trans: 2,3-trans-(-)-epicatechin-(+)-catechin-(+)-catechin: procyanidin C4, and [4,8:4",8"]-2,3-cis-3,4-trans: 2",3"-trans-3",4"-trans: 2,3-cis-(-)-epicatechin-(+)-catechin-(-)-epicatechin] is described. Condensation of (2R,3R,4S)-5,7,3'4'-tetra-O-benzyl-4-(2"-ethoxyethyloxy)flavan derived from (-)-epicatechin as an electrophile with the dimeric nucleophiles in the presence of TMSOTf followed by deprotection yielded trimers. Inhibitory activities on the Maillard reaction and antioxidant activity on lipid peroxide of the synthesized oligomers were also investigated.