Gabriel Vargas to Present at GTC’s Neurological Biomarkers Mtg. on Mar 19-21, 2014 in San Diego

San Diego, CA, November 24, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Gabriel Vargas, Executive Medical Director of Neuroscience Early Development at Amgen will give a featured presentation on “Advances in Translational Neuroscience” at the 3rd Neurological Biomarkers Conference (March 19-21, 2014 in San Diego, CA).

In Dr. Vargas’s presentation, he will discuss the recognized challenges to the development of neuropsychiatric drugs. These include poor preclinical models, subjective rating scales and the lack in our understanding of pathophysiology for many of these disorders. His talk will also highlight some recent advances using biomarkers and translational methods which may help in early neuroscience drug development.

Benefits of this talk include:
• Understand what some of the challenges in neuroscience drug development are.
• Develop an appreciation for how biomarker approaches can aid early drug development
• Become familiar with some new translational approaches in neuroscience
• Come to an understanding how developing a translational platform can be helpful

Gabriel Vargas, MD, PhD is a board certified psychiatrist and basic scientist with clinical experience in the treatment and management of schizophrenic patients. He has published in the areas of GPCR signaling and membrane trafficking with a particular expertise in approaches using basic science to understand the molecular pathophysiology of genetic diseases. After leaving academia in 2006 he spent five years at Roche the last 3 in Basel, Switzerland as head of the CNS Biomarker Group. He is currently at Amgen as where he is an Executive Medical Director and Therapeutic Area Head for Neuroscience in early development.

The 3rd Neurological Biomarkers Conference brings together experts from industry, academia and non-profit organizations to discuss the latest research and the challenges that the biomarker field faces specifically in neuroscience. This conference is part of the larger Biomarker Summit 2014 which includes the following co-located conferences:

1) 7th Oncology Biomarkers
2) 3rd Inflammatory & Immunological Biomarkers

For more information, please visit www.gtcbio.com/biomarkers/neuro