Discovery Strategies 1999
Incorporating Mouse Models in Target Discovery and Validation
(How to choose 'em... How to use 'em)
Scientific Focus
The Discovery Strategies conference will be presented as a workshop, pairing a mouse model expert from The Jackson Laboratory with a disease expert from the pharmaceutical industry, to lead strategy sessions for using the mouse in studies of Cancer, Diabetes, Autoimmune diseases and QTL analysis. All participants will have the option to choose two out of four workshops to attend. On day two, all participants will convene for an overview of all the workshop sessions and discuss outcomes from the prior days sessions.
Speaker List:
|
Ariel Darvasi |
QTL Analysis Workshop Session |
|
Iain Dukes |
Type II Diabetes (NIDDM) Workshop Session |
|
Barbara Knowles |
Cancer Workshop Session |
|
Ed Leiter |
Type II Diabetes (NIDDM) Workshop Session |
|
John Mudgett |
Autoimmunity Workshop Session |
|
Beverly Paigen |
QTL Analysis Workshop Session |
|
Steve Ritland |
Cancer Workshop Session |
|
Derry Roopenian |
Autoimmunity Workshop Session |
|
Barbara Tennent |
Cancer Workshop Session |
Sessions:
Cancer Workshop Session
Workshop Leaders:
Barbara Knowles (The Jackson Laboratory)
Steve Ritland (Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc.)
Barbara Tennent (The Jackson Laboratory)
The National Cancer Institute recognizes the potential for preclinical models of human cancers, especially genetically engineered mice, as an extraordinary opportunity for progress against cancer. Genetically defined mouse models are now available in which tissue-specific cancers arise through very similar genetic etiologies as the corresponding human cancers. This session explores the opportunities provided by these models for identifying and characterizing molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis and for developing targeted cancer therapeutics. Topics considered include target discovery and oncology drug development for use in prevention as well as treatment of primary and advanced cancers. The advantages of evaluating treatments against endogenous tumors in immunocompetent mice will be a central theme.
Type II Diabetes (NIDDM) Workshop Session
Workshop Leaders:
Iain Dukes (Glaxo Wellcome Research and Development)
Ed Leiter (The Jackson Laboratory)
The focus of this group will be on type II diabetes and the parameters associated with it, particularly obesity and insulin resistance. Participants will be guided toward an appreciation of how the mouse genome can be productively utilized to dissect genetic and biochemical/physiologic pathways that underlie the genetically heterogeneous set of glucose intolerance syndromes that in aggregate, constitute type II diabetes. Depending upon interest, the overlap between mouse models of type II and type I diabetes may also be considered.
Autoimmunity Workshop Session
Workshop Leaders:
John Mudgett (Merck Research Laboratories)
Derry Roopenian (The Jackson Laboratory)
From pure genetic models of spontaneous disease, to induced pathologies in susceptible strains, to genetically engineered mice with mixed backgrounds, mouse models of autoimmune and inflammatory disease continue to be a mainstay of basic and applied research. The selection, use and evaluation of currently available mouse models to answer specific questions in relation to our understanding and treatment of disease will be the focus of this session. The development of better approaches to characterize and more efficiently utilize mouse models of disease will also be discussed."
QTL Analysis Workshop Session
Workshop Leaders:
Ariel Darvasi (Compugen Ltd.)
Beverly Paigen (The Jackson Laboratory)
Methodology in QTL analysis is improving rapidly. This session will present some of the methods for narrowing the region once a QTL has been detected. These include selective genotyping, selective phenotyping, progeny testing of recombinants, construction of overlapping congenic strains, advanced intercross lines, and recombinant inbred strain testing. In particular, the application of QTL mapping to behavioral traits and to pharmacogenomics, which is the genetic basis of variation in drug response, will be discussed. Methods for detecting gene-gene interaction in QTL analysis will also be presented. The relevance of finding QTL in rodent models to human disease will be discussed with some data presented showing the concordance of QTL in mice, rats, and humans for hypertension. Finally, the usefulness of cloning rodent QTL to drug discovery will be discussed with examples from atherosclerosis and cholesterol gallstones.
