Symposium on Accelerating Biology 2023: "Discovery to Delivery"

Preamble

The amalgamation of multidisciplinary expertise in life sciences has been playing a major role in the emerging healthcare system. The transformation is highly evident with development of newer algorithms, technologies and research methods in order to have a direct impact on the patient’s well being. Bioinformatics approaches are becoming even more essential in translational drug discovery. Computational exploitation of these increasing volumes of data generated during all phases of drug discovery is enabling key challenges of the process to be addressed.

Over the past 100 years, human civilization has witnessed several pandemics, viz., the devastating COVID19, and is yet to come out with solutions that can handle such a situation in a short duration of time with minimal economic and social impact. Finding solutions to combat the recent pandemic saw an interplay of different domains which included epidemiology, diagnostics, genomics, drug discovery and vaccine development.

The implications derived from genomics sequence studies provided an insight into the interactions between the viral proteins and the host proteome, in this case the host being humans. The discovery of these viral proteins labelled them as efficient targets and this led to their thorough exploration by the drug development industry. Evolutionary studies enabled the information on its resemblance to the earlier known viruses, which provided a boost to the drug repurposing and repositioning approaches.

Genomics and drug discovery studies saw a balanced use of the experimental and computational techniques which led to generation of huge amounts of sequence and structural data. The modern supercomputer available at the behest of several research organizations served to be a boon, handling multiple genome sequencing, performing their analyses followed by screening of huge small molecules databases against various target viral proteins in a short span of time. In Indian context, the role of Ayurveda in containing the spread of the virus cannot be neglected. With the availability of data from all domains viz. diagnostics, genomics, drug discovery and vaccine development there is need to develop models which can handle such multivariate data. Bioinformatics resources and methods are being developed to support the drug discovery pipeline by bringing in innovative technologies to handle the multivariate data through creation of large data warehouses, algorithms to analyze ‘big data’ that identify novel drug targets and/or biomarkers, programs to assess the tractability of targets, and prediction of repositioning opportunities that use licensed drugs to treat additional indications.

This year “Accelerating Biology 2023: Discovery to Delivery” targets towards bringing together experts from varied domains on a single platform, enabling sharing of their research with the budding and established researchers nationwide.

Focus areas:

• Insilico Drug Discovery and Repurposing Designing the Blockbuster
• Multiomics in Healthcare
• Ayurveda and Traditional Medicine
• Quantum and Exascale Computing
• Biological Data Integrators
• Artificial Intelligence in Biology and Medicine
• Biotechnology Industry and Starts-ups

Speakers:

 

Technical Schedule

Know Us

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) with its genesis in the year 1988 as a national initiative of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, embodies the spirit of indigenous high-end research and development for state -of -the-art technologies and solutions. As a scientific society, C-DAC has been continuously engaged for over two and a half decades, towards the design, development and deployment of electronics and advanced Information Technology (IT) products and solutions for the benefit of the society. C-DAC's thrust in meeting the national agenda has manifest itself in the execution of several key projects, leading to the creation of a strong brand equity for its inherent expertise and capabilities, in the global context. Presently, this expertise extends to the field of High Performance Computing (HPC) fueling various scientific, engineering and business applications. Fostering an environment of innovation and dealing with cutting edge technologies, C-DAC's PARAM series of supercomputers, the latest being the 524 TF PARAM-YUVA-II, have been used to address these diverse applications at various national and international institutions. The implementation of the Garuda Grid has seen the optimal usage of HPC resources spread across the nation in a congregated manner accelerating scientific research. In-house developed hardware components in the form of Reconfigurable Computing System (RCS) cards specific for particular scientific applications have accelerated them many folds. Over the years the Bioinformatics Group of C-DAC has developed into an active centre of bioinformatics research, applying HPC to accelerate biological research towards the betterment of human life.

Bioinformatics@C-DAC

The Bioinformatics Group at C-DAC leverages the inherent technological expertise to delve into complex biological systems and develop an understanding of underlying processes by providing high throughput solutions and services. The group has a dual capability of expertise in advanced areas of research in computational biology along with understanding of High Performance Computing. The activities of the Bioinformatics Group are aimed towards acquiring in-depth knowledge and understanding the various strata of bio-complexity and hence include an entire spectrum of data analyses and essential research consumables. Various in-house research activities are being carried out which include genome sequence assembly, microarray data analysis, structure-based drug discovery, protein folding and various molecular dynamics simulation using advanced Molecular Modelling techniques. Backed by its Bioinformatics Resources and Applications Facility (BRAF), the team has developed an entire spectrum of tools, databases and allied resources for research to address current and future Bioinformatics challenges.

The group has active collaborations with a number of eminent research organizations and industries, national and international such as Pirbright Institute (UK), Roslin Institute (UK), University of Surrey (UK), Oregon Health and Science University (USA), NIH (USA), Bard College (USA), University of Illinois (USA), National Centre for Cell Science (Pune), University of Pune (Pune), IIT Madras (Chennai), Tata Memorial Hospital (Mumbai), National Chemical Laboratory (USA), Ventri Biologicals (Pune), IBB (Pune), ACTREC (Mumbai) and industries like Lupin Ltd. Pune

Poster Submission and Young Speaker program

All registered participants are encouraged to make a poster presentation of their recent research activities and submit an abstract, not exceeding 250 words.The confirmation of poster selection will be notified by February 10, 2023.

Poster size should be 3ft X 4ft. Material to be required for mounting the poster will be provided by organizers.

The posters would be evaluated and the best few posters would be awarded.

Abstract Guidelines:

1. The title should summarize the abstract and convince that the topic is important.
2. Provide the names and department affiliation of all authors who contributed to the project.
3. Italicize your faculty mentor’s name and provide the department affiliation.
4. The word limit is 250 words.
5. Use font Calibri, font size 12 and line spacing 1.2.
6. The document should be submitted as a MS Word document (doc). A pdf is not acceptable.
7. Email your abstract to ab2023@cdac.in

Note: Name of presenting author should be underlined and certificate will be given only to presenting author.

 

Accommodation

For accommodation, the participant can approach Orchid Hotel directly for bookings and payments on their own.

The Orchid Hotel would be providing exclusive discounted tariff for the participants

 

 

Important Dates

Events	Dates
Registration Starts	20th November 2022
Early Bird Registration Ends	20th December, 2022 Date Extended Till 31st December 2022
Registration Ends	31st January 2023 Closed
Abstract and Poster Deadline	31st January 2023

• There are Limited seats, Registration will be on a First Come First Serve basis.
• Registration will be closed as soon as the seats get full.

Symposium Venue

The Orchid Hotel,
Adjacent Chhatrapati Shivaji Sports Complex,
Pune - Bangalore Road, Balewadi,
Pune, Maharashtra 411045

For BRAF users

For BRAF users a special discount will be offered for existing BRAF user (Valid BRAF users already accessing BRAF on or before 15 November 2022). Only one discount will be given at a time.

It is compulsory to submit a poster to avail BRAF user for discount

To avail BRAF user discount download the form and send the duly filled form along with IMPS/NEFT/UPI transaction receipt, institute's authorization letter or ID card photocopy duly signed and stamped by the HOD to ab2023@cdac.in In subject line kindly mention "AB2023: BRAF Users Form -{BRAF account login name}"

example: Subject: AB2023: BRAF User Form - vivekg

Alternatively, the applicant can also send the form along with all attachments through Post to following address:

Convenor: Dr. Rajendra Joshi
Kind Attn: Ms. Jyoti Chougule
HPC- Medical and Bioinformatics Applications Group,
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Innovation Park,
Panchavati, Pashan, Pune - 411 008, India.
Tel: 020-25503272 (10:00 am to 5:00PM)
Email: ab2023@cdac.in