Professional training in Cancer Therapeutics
Cancer drug development
2 Months Course
Starting From
1st Feb to 31 March
Course Description:
Cancer is a group of more than 200 neoplastic diseases, caused by diverse deregulated cell
signaling cascades.1 It represents the leading causes of morbidity as well as mortality across the
globe and over the coming two decades, its incidence is predicted to increase by approximately
70%. As the research about cancer pathogenesis has increased, several mechanisms for drug
development and discover also emerged. In this course, a complete analysis from basics to
advanced levels about cancer drug discovery is described and learners will be equipped with the
ability to analyze key targets for drug development not only for cancer but also for other diseases
as well.
Key Points:
• Introduction to Cancer therapeutics and its genomic basis
• How are cancer drugs discovered?
• Biological Databases for finding key targets to develop anticancer drugs
• Steps involved in the development of anticancer drug till its approval
• Targeted genes, receptors and enzymes for the treatment of cancer
• How are new cancer drugs tested during preclinical research?
• How are new cancer drugs tested during clinical research?
• Novel and latest drugs approved by FDA for cancer treatment
• Computational drug discovery for cancer
• Prevention, safety and approval of novel drugs for cancer therapy
Trainer Introduction:
Mr. Zeeshan Ahmed is currently working as Junior Scientist of Biotechnology at Green Biotec UG Bremen, Germany since May 2022. Previously, he was a Research Officer/Teaching Assistant at Government College University, Lahore Pakistan and also worked as a researcher at Food and Biotechnology Research center at Pakistan Council of Scientific and industrial research. He has 11 international publications with 51+ impact factor and have expertise in biotechnology techniques like gene cloning, fermentation technology, Immunology, Research methodology, Bioinformatics, Molecular diagnostics, Antibodies development, Antivirals. Virology, Microbial genetics, Recombinant DNA technology, Biosafety and Bioethics, Bioremediation, Immunoassays, Tissue culture, Media optiization, cultivated meat production, Development of protein based downstream and cost estimation of upstream processing, Cell engineering (e.g. genetic engineering of bacteria, yeat and eukaryotic cells) for recombinant proteins production, microbiology, protein purification, and Cloning of genes. Mr. Zeeshan has full command on overlooking all biotechnology labs primarily working of recombinant product production and immunoassays. However, most of his lab and research experience is in bioprocess development, virology, and molecular biology techniques. He has experience with following techniques/lab testing: Isolation and screening or microbes, acid-fast staining, flow cytometry, western blotting, southern blotting, nothern blotting, Agarose gel electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE, Dialysis, Chromatography techniques like HPLC, Ion-exchange etc, Immunoassays like ELISA, RIA etc, Transformation of cells, competent cell formation, Protein purification, Cell groeth analysis, spectrometry, DNS. These testing techniques are usually performed on bispecific antibodies, biosimilars, food and beverages, ex-vivo gene and cell therapy, monoclonal antibodies (MABs), Polyclonal antibodies (PABs), antibodies, dairy products, RNA/mRNA therapy/ vaccines, tissue engineering and isolation. Mr. Zeeshan has expertise in using Bioinformatics software like Pimer3, PyMOL, ClustalOmega, OligoCalc etc. These software and websites are used for Insilco studies of genes and proteins to find their structure and sequence. Moreover, he has expertise in using automated nuclic acid extraction kits for fast extraction of plasmids and chromosomal DNA, QA/QC testing, and automated gel dock systems.
Course Objectives:
To acquaint learners with concepts of cancer drug development,
computational methods for drug discovers, processes involved in cancer drug development
and equipped them with advanced techniques for cancer research and make them prepare for future challenges
Learning Outcomes:
After completing this course student should be able to:
• Identify key targets in cancer research
• Drug development strategies
• Computational drug designing and its importance
• Molecular pathways for cancer drug development
• Different types of cancer and their key biomarkers
• Transcriptomics of cancer
• Identify molecular signaling pathways to treat different cancers
Who Should attend?
• University students who want to learn about drug discover and cancer
• Industrial professional in the field of pharmacology want to learn about the process of cancer
drug development
• Medical Doctors
• Students seeking guidance to discover treatment of Cancer
• Pharmacists
• Biology and molecular biology students seeking guidance from basic to advance levels of
drug discovery
• Drug development students and scientists
Course Contents:
Week 1
Introduction to Cancer and its Genomics: What is Cancer? History of Cancer therapeutics, DNA
topology as a target for anticancer drug development. Other targets for cancer drug development,
Key steps involved in drug development.
Week 2
Anticancer drug target prediction: Basic features of databases and its role in identification of
targets for specific cancer types
Week 3
Discovery of Cancer Drugs: Accidental discovery, biosimilars, drugs through plants animals and fungi,
Problems with pre-clinical models for human cancer. Efficacy of Cancer drugs
Week 4-5
Failure of most anticancer drugs in phase 1 clinical trials: Challenges associated with Phase 1 trials,
Undermining and Phase 1 trials, Genome driven treatment approaches, Blood based approaches.
Week 6
Biosynthetic products for anticancer drug design and treatment: The Bryostatins, Background of
Bryostatins, Role of Bryostatins in different types of tumors and multiple leukemia.
Week 7-8
Drug Resistance pathways as targets: Drug transport targeting, Cellular stress response targeting,
Microenvironment induced drug resistance pathways, Targeting DNA repair systems.
Week 9-10
mTOR signaling and drug development in cancer: Tumor cell proliferation and angiogenesis by mTOR,
biomarkers for the inhibition of mTOR, anti-cancer activity and overcoming mechanisms of resistance.
Week 11-14
Recent advances in cancer drug development: Immunotherapy using CAR T cells, CRISPR and other
potential tools for cancer drug discovery.
Week 15-16
High-Throughput Screening Assays for the Discovery of Anti-Cancer Compounds
Week 17-18
Transcriptomics of cancer for drug discovery
Week 19
Genetic Perturbation Screens for cancer drug discovery
Week 20-22
Computational methods while discovering anticancer drugs: Introduction to computational
methods, importance of Computational methods in drug discovery, Anticancer drug target
prediction, Structure based drug discovery, Ligand based drug discovery, Using MD stimulations
to find new drug binding sites, Artificial intelligence in anticancer drug discovery, Successful
stories of computational drug discovery.
Week 23
Genes involved in different types of cancer and case studies of Ovarian and Breast cancer to
analyze the pathways of tumor cells
Week 24
Novel drugs and Future Challenges: Drugs approved by FDA for cancer treatment, their
targets and action mechanism to combat cancer.
