Speakers & Agenda

Provisional Agenda

(Subject to change)

All talks will be held in the The Edward Boyle auditorium, The Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College (Oxford).

Day 1, Tuesday, 31 March 2015

08.30-09.20: Registration, welcome coffee and networking

09.20: Housekeeping announcements

09.25: Welcome by the symposium chair

09.30: Dr David Bunka
Co-director and CTO of Aptamer Solutions and Aptamer Diagnostics Ltd, UK
Title: Aptamers: Where’ve we been, where are we now and where are we going

10.00: Professor Said Ismail
Head, Molecular Biology Research Laboratory, Medical School, University of Jordan, and, Head, Molecular Diagnostics Lab, Jordan University Hospital, Amman, Jordan
Title: Aptamers as Potential Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors

10.30: Professor Dr Ulrich Hahn
University of Hamburg, Department Chemistry, Institute for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 6, Hamburg, Germany
Title:  Cell surface protein specific aptamers for diagnosis, therapy and cargo delivery into target cells

11.00: Refreshment break, posters, exhibition, networking

11.30: Dr Sarah Shigdar
Lecturer in Medical Sciences, Deakin University, VIC, Australia
Title: Getting the brain to take its medicine

11.50: Professor Yoshikazu Nakamura
President and CEO, Ribomic Inc, Tokyo, Japan
Title: Aptamer therapeutics targeting pain and lung fibrosis

12.10: Dr Georg Mahlknecht
Immunology Department, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Title: Aptamers targeting growth factor receptors

12.30: Dr Paloma H Giangrande
Associate Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Iowa, USA
Title: RNA aptamer smart drug for the treatment of vascular injury

13.00: Lunch and networking

14.00: Professor Nagy Habib
Professor of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Surgery & Cancer, Imperial College London, UK
Title: Targeted RNA activation

14.30: Dr Vittorio de Franciscis
Research Director, CNR Institute of Experimental Endocrinology and Oncology, Naples, Italy
Title: Combined selective targeting of cancer stem cells by aptamer-miRNA/antimiR conjugates  

15.00: Professor Dr Beatrix Suess
Synthetic Genetic Circuits, Technical University of Darmstadt, 03 064 Schnittspahnstraße 1064287, Darmstadt, Germany
Title: Control of alternative splicing by engineered riboswitches

15.30: Refreshment break, posters, exhibition, networking

16.00: Dr Thomas Schubert
2bind GmbH, Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
Title: Characterisation of aptamer-target interactions using MicroScale Thermophoresis

16.30: Professor Dr Günter Mayer
Life and Medical Sciences (LIMES)- Institute, University of Bonn, Gerhard-Domagk-Str. 1, Bonn, Germany
Title: A modular approach to nucleobase-modified aptames

17.00: Professor Karolien De Wael
AXES Research Group, Department of Chemistry, Antwerp University, Belgium
Title: Electrochemical aptasensing devices

17.20: Dr Arnaud Buhot
University of Grenoble/CNRS/CAE, France
Title: Gold nanoparticles SPRi enhanced signal for small molecules detection with split aptamer

17.40: Dr Julian Tanner
Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Hong Kong, China
Title: DNA aptamers for point-of-care malaria diagnosis – from crystal structure to clinical application using Aptamer Tethered Enzyme Capture (APTEC) 

18.00: Dr Graeme Doran
Director of Genomic Assays, FireFly BioWorks, Cambridge, MA, USA
Title: Direct quantification of small nucleic acid delivery to tissues

18.30: Close

19.00: NETWORKING DINNER (By invitation or prior booking only)

 

Day 2, Wednesday, 01 April 2015 

9.20: Dr Jean-Jacques Toulmé
Director, Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie, Pessac, France
Title: Aptamer driven supra-molecular assembly

09.50 Dr David Porciani
NEST – Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza San Silvestro 12 Pisa, Italy
Title: Aptamer-mediated co-delivery of doxorubicin and NF-kB decoy enhances chemosensitivity of pancreatic tumor cells

10.20: Dr Nebojsa Janjic
SomaLogic, Inc, 2945 Wilderness Place, Boulder, CO, USA
Title: Modified aptamers with enhanced chemical diversity as essential tools for biomedical research

10.40: Refreshment break, posters, exhibition, networking

11.10: Professor Weian Zhao
Assistant Professor, Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
Title: Microencapsulated aptamer sensors for digital quantification of blood biomarkers

11.30: Dr Maureen McKeague
Bioengineering Department, Stanford University, USA
Title: Advancing a development pipeline for RNA switches through scalable measurement platform

11.50: Dr Yoann Roupioz
University of Grenoble/CNRS/CAE, France
Title: On the use of aptamer microarrays as a platform for the exploration of human prothombin/thrombin conversion

12.10: Mr Nam Nguyen Quang
CEA, Molecular Imaging Research Center, France
Title: Improvement of aptamers combining doped-SELEX and next-generation sequencing

12.30: Lunch and close