The mantra was scientific innovation, therapeutic area expertise, new technology and accelerate quickly to the clinic at IBC's 3rd annual Drug Discovery and Development of Innovative Therapeutics JAPAN event which took place May 7-9, 2008 at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, attracting over 200 attendees and 15 exhibitors from around the world. The buzz among delegates and exhibitors alike was that the quality of scientific talks and panel discussions presented by the 50+ speakers from around the world was excellent, and that the most exciting talks discussed concrete strategies to aid in lead optimization and candidate selection, as well as approaches to increase success rates in early clinical development and achieve clinical proof of concept using biomarkers, translational research techniques and other tools.

Numerous drug discovery and development case studies from companies such as Merck, Alnylam, Shionogi, Amgen, Regeneron, AstraZeneca, Roche, Toyama, CV Therapeutics, Aurigene Discovery, Bayer Schering, RXi Pharmaceuticals, Kyowa Hakko, Curis, Inc., and Kalobios were presented in the areas of oncology, rheumatoid arthritis/inflammation, diabetes and other diseases.

There was huge interest from delegates in the sessions related to the next generation of therapeutics emerging from antibodies, antibody fragments, RNAi and other antibody-like/protein scaffolds. Interactive panel discussions were vibrant on topics as diverse as how to enhance industry-academic-biotech collaborations to accelerate drug development and how to maximize R&D collaboration and R&D innovation between Japanese companies and the pharma/biotech companies outside Japan to build up lagging drug pipelines.

Keynote presentations from Merck, Alnylam, University of Tokyo and Kyoto University (on Shinya Yamanaka's iPS work) were highlights of the event...the latter keynote from Kyoto University attracting a rush of 10 press reporters to attend that talk alone.

The manageable size of the event and high quality of attendees (Senior Scientist, Manager, Director and VP levels from scientific R&D departments and business development/licensing groups) ensured excellent networking opportunities throughout the conference and exhibition hall, and for the first time at this event, the online partnering system allowed attendees to pre-schedule one on one meetings with other attendees in advance of the conference.

Simultaneous translation in Japanese and English was provided for all presentations and panel discussions allowing for a free exchange of scientific information, R&D strategies and new ideas.