THIS EVENT HAS ENDED

Video of the workshop is available at the links below:

Assay Guidance Workshop on 3D Tissue Models for Antiviral Drug Development (Day 1) (June 7, 2022)

Assay Guidance Workshop on 3D Tissue Models for Antiviral Drug Development (Day 2) (June 8, 2022)

About the Workshop

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Assay Guidance Manual (AGM) program is hosting a two-day workshop that will cover a broad range of critical concepts, including practical approaches and best practices, for developing standardized 3D cellular assays with the hope of helping the community to successfully develop therapeutics for future pandemic threats. This workshop is jointly organized by NCATS, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The overall goal of this workshop is to help scientists establish robust, reproducible, scalable, consistent, advanced 3D tissue models to study pandemic threat viruses.

Objectives

Introduce participants to the available 3D tissue models and discuss challenges in building these models as well as their utility and limitations.
Provide case studies on how these available 3D tissue models have been utilized in antiviral drug discovery and development as well as tools for understanding and modeling infectious diseases, including studying viral infection and pathogenesis.
Provide guidelines and considerations for developing robust and reproducible 3D tissue models that can be used for testing therapeutics.
Discuss challenges in affordability, accessibility, transferability, and reproducibility of these 3D tissue models and the need to set standards on utilization and readouts.
Discuss the advantages vs disadvantages of these 3D tissue models.
Generate a roadmap to help scientists develop robust and reproducible 3D tissue models to study viruses.

Agenda

Day 1 Agenda

Day 2 Agenda

Download the agenda

About the Assay Guidance Manual

The Assay Guidance Manual (AGM) is a free, best-practices online resource devoted to the successful development of robust, early-stage drug discovery assays.

The manual was originally developed to provide step-by-step guidance based on experiential knowledge from drug developers for planning and executing projects in high-throughput screening, lead optimization and early phases of drug development. The AGM has now been expanded into a unique, user-friendly collection of over 50 chapters of well-tested knowledge, much of which is being documented for the first time. Methods outlined in the manual address appropriate statistical ways to analyze assay results and accommodate minor changes to assay protocols to ensure robustness.

Investigators worldwide can use the manual to design biologically and pharmacologically relevant assays for high-throughput screening and lead optimization to evaluate collections of molecules that modulate the activity of biological targets, pathways and cellular phenotypes.

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) manages the content of the manual with input from industry, academia and government experts. More than 100 authors from around the world have contributed content to this free resource, which is updated regularly and housed by the National Library of Medicine. The chapters have PubMed citations for the contributing authors.

Workshop Organizing Committee


Rodolfo Alarcon, NIAID, NIH	Abigail Grossman, NCATS, NIH
Kyle Brimacombe, NCATS, NIH	Matthew D. Hall, NCATS, NIH
Mindy Davis, NIAID, NIH	Robert Jordan, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Ken Duncan, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation	Emily M. Lee, NCATS, NIH
Ann E. Eakin, NIAID, NIH	Sarine Markossian, NCATS, NIH
Marc Ferrer, NCATS, NIH	Thames Pickett, NIAID, NIH
Stephanie Ford-Scheimer, NCATS, NIH	Mark Williams, NIAID, NIH

’Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’ is a registered trademark of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the United States and is used with permission.

The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators at HHS-sponsored conferences do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.