You pop an aspirin when you have head ache but have you ever wondered how a drug comes to be, how much time and money does it take and what multi million dollar companies across the globe put at stake? Come to the Drug Design/ Nano Drug-delivery Systems Workshop and learn the nuances of how a drug is conceptualized and how libraries of compounds are raked by powerful computers before one molecule out of thousands qualifies to be drug.
Change tracks and learn how nano drug-delivery systems are designed and how they will revolutionize the world of drug delivery in the future. And at the end of it, get to participate in a design event where you design your own nano drug delivery system and win attractive cash prizes too!
The event would consist of two lectures followed by a drug design event.
The first lecture would be an in-depth overview of the various stages of the drug design process starting from the conception of a drug to attack a particular target, through the painstaking process of identifying the active pharmaceutical ingredient to the final stage of getting approval of the regulatory authorities to recognize the drug for a particular indication. This lecture is aimed at listeners who are not necessarily from a Biotech/Pharma background, but is meant to show as to how almost every field of research (ranging from Computer science, material science, chemistry, physics, and of course medicine and biology) are involved in the process of drug design.
This would be followed by a prelim for the final design event. The questionnaire will be in the form of multiple choice questions and two essays. The results of these prelims will ascertain if a team is eligible to participate in the main competition which would be held after the second lecture.
The second lecture takes on from the first lecture. It will be a lecture to prepare the participants of the workshop for the design event. Once an active pharmaceutical is obtained, it needs to be incorporated with a suitable drug delivery system (Examples may vary from tablets to nano shells). In this lecture, the various drug delivery systems will be explained and while focusing on nano drug delivery systems. Also, the various modelling aspects and the various known responses to changes in parameters will be discussed in this lecture. This lecture is intended to be pedagogical in nature. For this, experience in designing of drug delivery systems is not expected, but an experience in modelling is desired of (or at least programming) which would be tested for in the prelims.
The main design event will be held after the second lecture. The problem statement will consist of certain constraints in terms of available technology (like membrane sizes, limit of size of manufacturing etc) and the participants will be required to design and model a system to match an output requirement as closely as possible. Participating team will be required to present their modelling strategy and the results at the end of the competition.
For any query, send a mail to drugdesign@shaastra.org or visit the helpdesk