CONFOMETRX RESEARCH FOUNDATION

The ConfometRx Research Foundation is a public non-profit foundation founded by Brian and Tong Sun Kobilka in 2009.

The goal of the foundation is to bring together scientists from academia and the biopharmaceutical industry to exchange ideas, disseminate information, and discuss challenges related to drug development targeting G-protein coupled receptors in order to facilitate the discovery of more effective and selective therapeutics for unmet medical needs.

Since 2010, the Foundation has been hosting Workshops to accomplish its goals. The first two Workshops (2010, 2011) focused heavily on structure-based drug discovery. In the 2013 workshop, we expanded the scope to incorporate emerging challenges and opportunities in GPCR drug discovery, while the 2015 meeting brought in themes around novel signaling paradigms and translation. The key themes for the 2017 Workshop were advances in structural understanding of GPCRs, novel signaling paradigms, the intersection of computational advances and chemical biology, biologics, and preclinical and clinical translation. Our 2019 Workshop focused on how cutting-edge, basic science can feed into academic and industrial drug discovery, with contributions from both academic and industry representatives. A key goal of the workshop was to facilitate communication between these two groups of scientists with the hope of fostering collaborations that will lead to more focused efforts to enable innovative approaches to drug discovery for GPCRs.

The format for our multi-day Workshops differs from more conventional conferences, where scientists typically present a combination of previously published work and recently completed unpublished work. We have established a format where there is a free flow of ideas centered around key problems facing GPCR drug discovery, and discussions of what different investigators have tried, what has worked, and what has failed. Morning sessions consist of presentations from invited speakers covering a range of topics. Afternoon and evening poster and interactive sessions provide a forum for attendees to present and discuss their latest research. Our conferences follow the principles of the Gordon Research Conferences, where the participants hold data and ideas discussed at the workshop in confidence.

We will be updating this page with information on future Workshops as soon as possible. We look forward to connecting again soon!