Speakers and presentations
Dr Ian Dunham, director, Open Targets
David Osimo, Director of Research at The Lisbon Council
Laia Pujol Priego, researcher, ESADE Business School co-author, Open Targets Case Study, Open Science Monitor
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