NEEDHAM, MA - Feb 27, 2014 - Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI) today announced the final agenda for its 14th AnnualStructure-Based Drug Design conference to be held on May 21-22, 2014 at the Westin Boston Waterfront, Boston, Massachusetts. The conference will showcase informative, high-quality case studies, innovative techniques, and strategies to move from computation to experiment, and finally, to drug.

Top scientists from pharma and biotech will address how they are hitting epigenetic targets, provide updates on the newest wave of GPCRs and other membrane proteins, and discuss the latest in fragment-based drug design. Attendees will return to their organizations with fresh perspectives and new ideas to maximize productivity and increase successes in drug discovery.

Keynote Presentation:
-- Structures, Chemical Probes, New Biology, New Targets for Drug Discovery: Is This the Right Sequence?
Chas Bountra, Ph.D., Head, Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC); Professor, Translational Medicine; Associate Head, Medical Sciences, University of Oxford

Sessions:
-- Updates on New Compounds and Targets
-- Properties of Fragments
-- GPCRs and Other Membrane Proteins
-- Water in Drug Design
-- Innovative Approaches to Enable Discovery

In addition, a pre-conference dinner short course on "Structure- and Dynamics-Based Design Strategies," will be hosted by Steven LaPlante, Ph.D., Founder & CEO, NMX Research & Solutions; Adjunct Professor, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) on Tuesday, May 20 from 6:00-9:00 pm. Plus, an exhibit/poster hall will stimulate dialogue for solutions most relevant to structure-based drug design.

"For this year's event, we really took attendee feedback into account to give the conference a bit of a face-lift. The program will feature all new content and expanded coverage on the topics that matter most to industry researchers, and the presentations are going to give attendees actionable advice to take to their labs. I think the discussions generated here will be some of the best yet," said Samantha Lewis, Conference Producer, CHI.

The conference is once again endorsed by the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) as a sponsoring society and Bio-IT World as the official media sponsor.

Past attendees of this conference had this to say about their experience at the meeting:

"The selection and speakers and presentations strongly demonstrated the expansive breadth and impact of structure-based drug design." - - Director of Bioinformatics, ActivX Biosciences

"Some very important principles were highlighted and the best thing was that the speakers could demonstrate working solutions." -- Computational Chemist, Bayer HealthCare

"Good quality, up-to-date presentations made this a stimulating and informative conference." -- CSO, De Novo Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

Important Dates:
Poster abstract submission deadline: April 4, 2014
Advanced registration discount deadline: April 18, 2014

For additional information, visit www.healthtech.com/structure-based-drug-design or call CHI at 781-972-5400.

Writers and editors are invited to attend. To request a press pass, email Lisa Scimemi, lscimemi@healthtech.com.

About Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI):
Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI), founded in 1992, is the industry leader in providing superior quality scientific information to eminent researchers and business experts from top pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic organizations. Delivering an assortment of resources such as events, reports, publications and eNewsletters, CHI's portfolio of products include Cambridge Healthtech Institute Conferences, Barnett International, Insight Pharma Reports, Cambridge Marketing Consultants, Cambridge Meeting Planners, and Cambridge Healthtech Media Group. For more information, visit www.chicorporate.com.