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Research and innovation
News article28 June 2019Directorate-General for Research and Innovation

High-Level Webinar: Open Targets - How Steps Towards Establishing a Data Commons Are Accelerating Drug Discoveries and Health Breakthroughs

On 5 July, Dr Ian Dunham, director of Open Targets, a large-scale consortium and platform created in 2015 to collaboratively establish the links between genetic targets and disease development, presented the Open Targets initiative. Dr Dunham looked at the challenges of biomedical research today and how ideas about a “data commons” and pre-competitive collaboration across private and public organizations can effectively accelerate drug discovery.Below you can see the recording from the webinar:

Speakers and presentations

Dr Ian Dunham, director, Open Targets

9 JULY 2019
Open Targets: Identifying Drug Targets in a Precompetitive Framework
English
(24.2 MB - PDF)
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David Osimo, Director of Research at The Lisbon Council

9 JULY 2019
Open Targets - About Open Science Monitor
English
(6.18 MB - PDF)
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Laia Pujol Priego, researcher, ESADE Business School co-author, Open Targets Case Study, Open Science Monitor

9 JULY 2019
Open Targets in the Open Science Monitor
English
(1.74 MB - PDF)
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Description

The sequencing of the human genome in 2003 was a landmark event in the human quest for understanding diseases and discovering new drugs to treat them. Since then, biomedical research has evolved to incorporate the deluge of new DNA sequence information and to address the computational challenges of transforming that knowledge into insight on disease-associated protein functions. But the capabilities to reach the required breakthroughs have proven well beyond those traditionally available to a single company. As a result, organisations like the European Bioinformatics Institute unit at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, GlaxoSmithKlein, Biogen, Takeda, Celgene and Sanofi are creating partnerships and platforms that allow them to pool data, technologies and research capabilities to accelerate drug discovery.

At this high-level webinar, Dr Ian Dunham, director of Open Targets, a large-scale consortium and platform created in 2015 to collaboratively establish the links between genetic targets and disease development, presented the Open Targets initiative. Dr Dunham looked at the challenges of biomedical research today and how ideas about a “data commons” and pre-competitive collaboration across private and public organizations can effectively accelerate drug discovery. He explored the policy challenges needed to deepen Europe’s footprint in this key area and described the contribution that “open targets” have already made, including the identification of 600 cancer-enabling genes and the creation of the first Human Cell Atlas for the lungs, which is expected to radically improve asthma relief.

Dr Dunham was joined at this registration-only webinar by leading experts from the Open Science Monitor for a discussion of the challenges – and solutions – to accelerate scientific data sharing and collaboration in biomedical research.

Details

Publication date
28 June 2019
Author
Directorate-General for Research and Innovation