Sunday, 7:30 PM

Mechanisms of anticancer and antiviral agents and update on nucleosides in clinical trials

• 7:40 - William Plunkett (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center) - "Mechanistic studies of anticancer agents gemcitabine and ara C"
• 8:10 - Varsha Ghandi (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center) - "Pharmacokinetics of ara-G (short talk)"
• 8:25 - Karen Biron (Glaxo-Wellcome ) - "Benzimidazole ribosides - novel inhibitors of cytomegalovirus"
• 9:10 - Yves Pommier (NCI-NIH) - "HIV-1 integrase and its inhibition by mono- and oligo-nucleotides"

Monday, 8:30 AM

Nucleoside pharmacology, toxicity and drug resistance

• 8:40 - Yung-Chi Cheng (Yale University) - "Unique metabolism and anti-viral activity of L-FMAU"
• 9:20 - Jean-Pierre Sommadossi (Univ. Alabama) - "Preclinical and clinical pharmacology of nucleosidic antiviral agents"
• 10:00 - Photograph
• 10:20 - Coffee
• 11:00 - Mark Wainberg (McGill University) - "Biochemical and genetic studies of drug resistance in HIV reverse transcriptase"
• 11:45 - Stefan Sarafianos (Rutgers University) - "X-Ray structures of drug resistant mutants of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase" (half talk)

Monday 4:30 to 6:00 PM - Poster Session I Preview

Monday, 7:30 PM

Oligonucleotides: Genomic targeting and mutagenesis

• 7:40 - Rich Meyer (Epoch Pharmaceuticals) - "Modifications of genes in cells with reactive oligonucleotides"
• 8:20 - Peter Glazer (Yale University) - "Targeted mutagenesis with modified triplex oligos"
• 9:00 - Nassim Usman (Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals) - "The use of ribosymes in therapeutic and functional genomics"

Monday 9:30 to 11:00 PM - Poster Session I

Tuesday, 8:30 AM

Topological recognition, base/backbone modification, and DNA stability

• 8:40 - Eric Kool (Univ. Rochester) - "How important are hydrogen bonds in DNA? Evaluation with nonpolar nucleoside isosteres"
• 9:20 - Tom Ellenberger (Harvard University) - "Crystal structure of the replicative DNA polymerase from phage T7 complexed with its processivity factor, primer-template and deoxynucleoside triphosphate"
• 10:00 - Coffee
• 10:40 - Frank Seela (Univ. Osnabruck) - "Modified purines in DNA-duplexes and quartet structures"
• 11:20 - Susan Freier (Isis Pharmaceuticals) - "The ups and downs of nucleic acid duplex stability: Structure-stability studies on chemically modified DNA:RNA duplexes"

Tuesday, 7:30 PM

DNA repair: lesion recognition, enzymology and cellular response

• 7:40 - John Tainer (Scripps Research Institute) - "Xray structures of DNA repair enzyme-nucleotide complexes"
• 8:20 - Jim Drummond (Duke University) - "DNA mismatch repair and acquired drug resistance in human cells"
• 9:00 - Leona Samson (Harvard University) - "The cellular effects of O6-methylguanine and 3-methyladenine DNA lesions"

Wednesday, 8:30 AM

Chemical and enzymatic synthesis of novel nucleosides and biological activity

• 8:40 - Vasu Nair (University of Iowa) - "Using mutant cell lines to synthesize new nucleosides"
• 9:30 - Coffee
• 10:10 - Akira Matsuda (Hokkaido University) - "New antitumor nucleosides and their biological activity"
• 10:50 - Piet Herdewijn (Rega Institute) - "Rational and irrational design of new nucleoside and oligonucleotide structures of biological relevance"
• 11:30 - Arnon Lavie (Max-Planck Inst. for Mol. Physiol.) - "X-Ray structure of yeast thymidylate kinase and its implications for drug design" (short talk)

Wednesday 4:30 to 6:00 PM - Poster Session II Preview

Wednesday, 7:30 PM

Regulation in biosynthetic pathways

• 7:40 - Joanne Stubbe (M.I.T) - "Old and new intermediates in purine biosynthetic pathways"
• 8:20 - Beverly Mitchell (University of North Carolina) - "Inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase regulation and gene transfer"

Wednesday 9:30 to 11:00 PM - Poster Session II

Thursday, 8:30 AM

In vitro-evolution of catalytic enzymes, ribozymes and therapeutics

• 8:40 - Andrew Ellington (Indiana University) - "Diagnostic applications of selected ribozymes by in vitro evolution"
• 9:20 - Wojciech J. Stec (Polish Academy of Sciences) - "Progress in the stereocontrolled synthesis of P-chiral oligonucleotide analogues" (short talk)
• 9:40 - Coffee
• 10:30 - Jennifer Doudna (Yale University) - "The magnesium ion core: a paradigm for RNA folding"
• Dan Cook (Isis Pharmaceuticals) - "Use of purine and pyrimidine combinatorial libraries to target RNA"

Thursday 5:00 PM - Reception

Thursday 6:00 PM - Banquet

Thursday, 7:45 PM

Transport and Delivery

• 7:55 - Carol Cass (University of Alberta) - "Membrane transport of nucleosides and nucleoside drugs: Molecular properties of the ENT and CNT families of transporter proteins"
• 8:40 - Rudy Juliano (University of North Carolina) - "Transport and delivery of antisense oligonucleotides"