SAN DIEGO, CA, October 04, 2013 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Ingrid Wertz, scientist and project team leader of the Department of Early Discovery Biochemistry at Genentech, will give a presentation at the 4th Ubiquitin Research and Drug Discovery Conference to be held in San Diego, CA on February 20-21, 2014.

Dr. Wertz's laboratory investigates protein alterations that promote human disease. These pathogenic changes may include aberrant enzymatic activity, altered protein expression levels, or post-translational modifications such as phosphorylation or ubiquitination. Oncoproteins, tumor suppressors, and components of homeostatic signaling cascades are often modified by such mechanisms. Thus improper regulation of proteins can promote inflammatory disorders, cancer, and other disease states.

Her primary mission is to continue to identify and characterize the substrates and enzymes that regulate pathogenic signaling pathways. In this way, she aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms by which aberrant protein modification contributes to disease. Her laboratory uses and develops a variety of molecular, cellular, genetic, biophysical, proteomic, and in vivo systems to achieve our research goals.

The 4th Ubiquitin Research and Drug Discovery Conference is the premier conference that hosts an exciting group of professionals from the academic, biotech, pharmaceutical, and business communities. The conference will focus on drug discovery aspects within the ubiquitin pathway. Topics to be discussed include deubiquitinating enzymes as drug targets, novel drug targets in the ubiquitin system, ubiquitin-like modifications, ubiquitin pathways in neurobiology, ubiquitin proteasome system and oncology, and proteasome structure and function.

This conference is part of the Future Biotech Summit 2014, which consists of the following co-located conferences:

1) 4th Ubiquitin Research and Drug Discovery 2) 2nd Orphan Drug Research 3) Cell and Gene Therapy

For more information, please visit http://www.gtcbio.com/conference/ubiquitin/agenda

GTC organizes conferences specifically for the biomedical and biopharmaceutical industries. Our goal is to facilitate the exchange of biopharmaceutical and biomedical intelligence between industry leaders, academic institutions, government organizations and the financial community.

GTC (Global Technology Community), LLC, is a privately held company founded in 2002.