Author: Catherine Maskell
New Core Monomer Set for HELM on GitHub
The Pistoia Alliance Hierarchical Editing Language for Macromolecules (HELM) project team is pleased to announce the publication of a curated library of monomers onto GitHub.
Monomers are the building blocks of biomolecules and HELM adopters need to decide what monomers they want to use very early in their journey with HELM. Until now there has been little guidance for monomer set creation and no recommended starting set.
The HELM project team has worked with Evan Bolton of PubChem and Anna Gaulton and Patricia Bento of ChEMBL to analyze their public datasets and identify the monomers that appear most frequently. Using a combination of metrics: the appearance of the monomer in biomolecules in PubChem, ChEMBL, the general literature, and patents, the team has identified a set of just over 300 peptide monomers and nearly 400 nucleotide monomers.
This set is now available on GitHub. Alongside the monomers, we have updated guidelines for creating and naming monomers which are available in our wiki.
We commend these monomers to new users. The set enables you to represent a large number of biomolecules with a tractable number of monomers. As the set becomes established, it is hoped that it will reduce the need for translation of HELM strings from different sources.
For more information on HELM, see www.OpenHELM.org.
We welcome new members, if you would like to join us please email info@OpenHELM.org.
Emerging Tech Will See Highest Level of Investment in Life Sciences in the Next 12 Months, Finds Survey From the Pistoia Alliance Conference
Boston, May 5, 2021: The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that advocates for greater collaboration in life sciences and healthcare R&D, today announced findings from a survey conducted at its spring conference. Respondents believe that emerging technologies including AI and blockchain will receive the highest level of investment in life sciences over the next 12 months (38%), followed by infectious diseases (32%), and oncology (14%). Respondents also predict that the biggest contributors to life science innovation post-pandemic will be startup biotech companies (35%), followed by startup tech companies (19%), and big pharma/biotech (18%).
“Now more than ever, research is occurring at the intersection between industries. Companies must embrace this trend and work together to tackle future challenges. We must advance quickly from disease treatment to disease cure, and finally to disease prevention,” commented Dr. Steve Arlington, President, the Pistoia Alliance. “Pooling resources and skills, and investing in emerging tech like AI and blockchain will enable us to better address future public health crises. Recently we have seen the benefits of collaboration during the development of vaccines, therapies and diagnostic tools to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. We must now apply this mindset to the multitude of other challenges we currently face.”
At the conference, Ryan Brinkman, CEO at Cytapex Bioinformatics, described the potential of utilizing citizen scientists through gamification of tasks. He discussed how gamers were crowdsourced to accelerate and improve flow cytometry data analysis for COVID-19, through games developer CCP and its multiplayer online game, EVE Online. This project shows how people power can be increased exponentially to augment the work of scientists. No prior biological knowledge was required so all gamers were able to participate and help spot patterns in data that might not be typically noticed. These results were also used to help train machine learning algorithms to continue the work on new data sets in the future.
Dr. Monika Lessl, Senior Vice President, Head of Corporate R&D and Social Innovation, Bayer, gave a keynote speech at the event. She discussed how businesses can build on collaboration to address the unprecedented challenges we currently face – from climate change to population growth and an aging society. “Collaboration across borders can help us to meet all challenges we face going forward. The Pistoia Alliance provides a great space to convene people across different scientific industries and from large pharmaceutical companies to small startups. Only by bringing people together to define key challenges and discuss potential solutions will be able to truly break down life science innovation barriers and continue advancing research.”
The Lab of the Future (LoTF) was also discussed at the conference. Almost three-quarters (72%) of survey respondents think the LoTF will be 50% virtual or more by 2030. This underlines the shift we are seeing to hybrid work across all industries. However, unlike fields like finance or professional services, life sciences needs to carve its own path to embrace the flexibility of remote work while advancing the lab environment. To replicate a laboratory at home is much more difficult than replicating a virtual office, so it is essential life science firms develop the kind of LoTF that keeps driving innovation forward and does not hinder scientific progress.
The conference took place from 20th to 23rd April 2021 and was attended by nearly 500 global life sciences professionals, with 200 respondents taking part in survey polls. For more information about the Pistoia Alliance, please visit pistoiaalliance.org.
—ENDS—
About the Pistoia Alliance
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members’ organization made up of life science companies, technology, and service providers, publishers, and academic groups working to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D. It was conceived in 2007 and incorporated in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Its projects transform R&D through pre-competitive collaboration. It overcomes common R&D obstacles by identifying the root causes, developing standards and best practices, sharing pre-competitive data and knowledge, and implementing technology pilots. There are currently over 150 member companies; members collaborate on projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences R&D community, using The Pistoia Alliance’s proven framework for open innovation.
Media Contacts:
Spark Communications
+44 207 436 0420
pistoiaalliance@sparkcomms.co.uk
Tanya Randall
The Pistoia Alliance
+44 7887 811332
tanya.randall@pistoiaalliance.org
The Pistoia Alliance Tackles Challenges in Data Governance to Advance Digital Transformation in Pharma
Boston, 30 March, 2021: The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that advocates for greater collaboration in life sciences R&D, today launched its Data Governance Community of Interest (CoI). The CoI was initiated in response to a roundtable discussion assessing industry priorities. Attendees were senior R&D professionals from pharmaceutical companies including AbbVie, Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, and OSTHUS. Data governance is essential to enable digital transformation in pharmaceuticals and life sciences and to advance innovation. The new CoI will develop and publish best practices and standards for data governance, while also providing a platform for companies to come together to discuss common problems.
“Robust data governance and underlying data sharing infrastructure are essential to accelerate R&D innovation,” commented Dr. Steve Arlington, President of The Pistoia Alliance. “The incredible response from the life science community to COVID-19 has demonstrated how much can be achieved when scientists work together. We now need to maintain this mindset and continue collaborating, so that we build an ecosystem to support seamless data sharing and remove this common barrier to innovation. The industry must develop data governance best practices to make working together more straightforward and secure, not just in the event of another public health crisis, but to ensure that we can make rapid progress against all unmet needs.”
Without a data governance strategy, secondary uses of data to further innovation are inhibited. For example, synthetic comparator arms in clinical trials; deploying advanced AI/ML & NLP in R&D; and using real world evidence to inform drug discovery and improve clinical trial design. The Pistoia Alliance surveyed the roundtable attendees on their organization’s current implementation of data governance. The results of the survey show there is a clear disparity in the way governance is rolled out across companies. In 44 percent of those surveyed, the chief data officer sits at the functional level rather than the strategic board level. Further, 44 percent reported that they do not have a chief data officer (or similar role) within their organization. This is likely to be causing a disconnect between data governance strategy and implementation, leaving gaps in the processes.
“Many of our members have been voicing similar concerns around data governance, data access, and compliance with legal and regulatory requirements,” commented John Wise, member of the operations team and leader of the Data Governance CoI at The Pistoia Alliance. “In response, we have created this Community of Interest to discuss and address these barriers, and to develop industry-wide best practices. Our aim is to help the life science industry make the most of its data, while it continues its journey of digital transformation.”
The survey also identified several barriers slowing down digitalization and the application of advanced analytics – most commonly siloed application landscape (64%) and siloed organizational landscape cited by 57% of respondents respectively. Today, data assets are often stored in varying formats, and are hard to retrieve, share and are not interoperable. To extract as much value as possible from the data, it needs to be machine readable and actionable; this is critical for data utilization in AI and machine learning. Implementing the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) guiding principles, focusing on data quality and strengthening data infrastructure are vital in enabling the life science ecosystem benefit from the data it’s creating. Another significant barrier is cultural resistance, in joint second place, also cited by 57% of those surveyed. To overcome this issue, the life sciences industry must address the longstanding and instinctive cultural bias against data sharing, by not only encouraging it, but incentivizing it.
The Pistoia Alliance invites organizations in the industry to join the Community of Interest to help steer the development of best practices, ensure it meets industry requirements and to contribute feedback. To find out more please get in touch: john.wise@pistoiaalliance.org
– Ends –
About the Pistoia Alliance
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members’ organization made up of life science companies, technology, and service providers, publishers, and academic groups working to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D. It was conceived in 2007 and incorporated in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Its projects transform R&D through pre-competitive collaboration. It overcomes common R&D obstacles by identifying the root causes, developing standards and best practices, sharing pre-competitive data and knowledge, and implementing technology pilots. There are currently over 150 member companies; members collaborate on projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences R&D community, using The Pistoia Alliance’s proven framework for open innovation.
Media Contacts:
Spark Communications
+44 207 436 0420
pistoiaalliance@sparkcomms.co.uk
Tanya Randall
The Pistoia Alliance
+44 7887 811332
tanya.randall@pistoiaalliance.org
Pistoia Alliance Survey Finds 62 Percent of Life Science Professionals say AI will Lead to Faster R&D but is Held Back by Skills Gap and Data Bias
Boston, 16th March 2021: The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D, has today announced the results of a survey of life science professionals, on the implementation of AI and blockchain in the life sciences industry. The survey shows there is a high level of interest in AI among respondents, with 57 percent already engaging in computational drug repurposing. Similarly, the findings revealed that understanding of blockchain has increased, with 89 percent now aware of the technology, compared to 82 percent in 2018. Despite this increase, the survey identified that once again, lack of access to people with relevant blockchain skills remains the biggest barrier to widespread adoption (selected by 30 percent).
“The industry clearly has a willingness to engage with blockchain and AI technologies, but historical barriers are hampering progress. Cross-industry collaboration will be essential to overcoming issues around access to data and skills, so that more companies and thus, patients, can benefit from these technologies,” commented Dr. Steve Arlington, President of the Pistoia Alliance. “70 percent of our survey participants think blockchain has the potential to make a real difference in patient data management and sharing. Blockchain’s ability to instantly create tamper-proof records will become a key part of increasing patient participation as more clinical trials are conducted remotely because of the pandemic. We hope the security advantages can both improve patient trust and facilitate further knowledge sharing across the life science community.”
Another recurring challenge identified in the survey was data quality and data standards. Behind skills, participants ranked lack of standards (19 percent) and interoperability (17 percent) among the next biggest barriers slowing blockchain adoption. Likewise, 38 percent think algorithmic bias poses a barrier to AI for drug repurposing, and a further 42 percent think it has the potential to be a barrier. Life sciences generates huge volumes of data in an increasing number of formats. When data is disorganized and siloed it is not machine-readable, and when information ‘training’ an algorithm is limited it eventually creates a bias in the AI’s outputs. Organizations can address these data quality issues by adhering to the FAIR principles of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. The Pistoia Alliance has published a freely available toolkit to assist with FAIR implementation.
“Technologies including AI and blockchain have the potential to transform drug development. Yet no matter how powerful these technologies become, challenges and bias will exist until we improve the quality of data feeding algorithms,” commented Pistoia Alliance consultant Becky Upton. “To eliminate bias, data sets must be varied and drawn from accurate, diverse sources. Standards for data storing and sharing must also be improved. The Pistoia Alliance has created a Center of Excellence in AI and a project dedicated to Informed Consent using blockchain – to provide a space for the industry to share best practices and discuss common challenges. We urge any interested parties to get involved with our work and help inform our outputs so that we can collectively continue to accelerate R&D.”
To hear more about blockchain and AI implementations and benefits, join the Pistoia Alliance’s April conference ‘Collaborative R&D in Action‘, where these subjects will be discussed. The free event will consist of presentations from top pharma R&D leaders, debates with industry thought leaders, and unique networking opportunities. This research was conducted among 164 life science professionals via a series of webinars during January 2021. You can view recordings from the Pistoia Alliance’s recent AI Drug Repurposing webinar here, and the Application of Blockchain Technology in Clinical Trials here.
—ENDS—
About The Pistoia Alliance
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members’ organization made up of life science companies, technology, and service providers, publishers, and academic groups working to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D. It was conceived in 2007 and incorporated in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis, and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Its projects transform R&D through pre-competitive collaboration. It overcomes common R&D obstacles by identifying the root causes, developing standards and best practices, sharing pre-competitive data and knowledge, and implementing technology pilots. There are currently over 150 member companies; members collaborate on projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences R&D community, using The Pistoia Alliance’s proven framework for open innovation.
Media Contacts:
Spark Communications
+44 207 436 0420
pistoiaalliance@sparkcomms.co.uk
Tanya Randall
The Pistoia Alliance
+44 7887 811332
tanya.randall@pistoiaalliance.org
Pistoia Alliance Completes Pilot Phase of DataFAIRy:Bioassay Project
The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D, has completed the pilot phase of the DataFAIRy: Bioassay project. This collaborative project aims to make bioassay information available in a FAIR format to increase the efficiency of bench scientists engaged in experiment planning and enable research that otherwise requires tedious expert literature review.
The goals of the pilot included:
- Establishing a process and technology to efficiently curate and reliably extract high-quality biological assay protocol information and metadata contained in research publications into a machine-readable FAIR format.
- Validate an approach and data model (or models) for communication and publication of the annotation metadata.
- Provide recommended standards and guidelines for the acceptance and publication of bioassay data.
- Scope and propose a follow-on project to deliver high-quality annotations at a larger scale.
The DataFAIRy project team, consisting of Pistoia Alliance members drawn from organizations including AstraZeneca, BMS, Roche/Genentech, and Novartis, conducted a competitive technology assessment and selected BioHarmony: Annotator from Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD) as the technology platform for bioassay textual analysis and annotation based on terms from public ontologies.
Following the annotation work and an extensive QC process, the DataFAIRy team is preparing a series of recommendations for bioassay annotation standards, the disclosure of bioassay information, and alignment with ontology maintenance organizations and other standards and practices groups.
A selection of high-quality results from assays curated under this pilot project can be viewed as part of individual PubChem records or collectively as the “Pistoia Classification Tree” in the PubChem Classification Browser.
The Pistoia Alliance is currently planning the next phase of the DataFAIRy:Bioassay project, with the objectives of scaling up the annotation process and developing of community-accepted standards for the bioassay metadata. To get involved with the project, contact Pistoia Alliance Project Manager Vladimir Markarov.
– Ends –
About the Pistoia Alliance
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members’ organization made up of life science companies, technology, and service providers, publishers, and academic groups working to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D. It was conceived in 2007 and incorporated in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Its projects transform R&D through pre-competitive collaboration. It overcomes common R&D obstacles by identifying the root causes, developing standards and best practices, sharing pre-competitive data and knowledge, and implementing technology pilots. There are currently over 150 member companies; members collaborate on projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences R&D community, using The Pistoia Alliance’s proven framework for open innovation.
About Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.
CDD’s (www.collaborativedrug.com) goal is to advance science through better data management. It’s flagship product, CDD Vault®, is a hosted informatics solution that allows researchers to organize data and experiments and securely collaborate in real-time. CDD also offers the BioHarmony™ Drug Data Store, providing semantic data on preclinical, clinical, and post-approval developments. In addition, CDD has developed a FAIR assay annotation platform based on its proprietary technologies.
Media Contacts:
Tanya Randall
The Pistoia Alliance
+44 7887 811332
tanya.randall@pistoiaalliance.org
Let’s Not Wait Another 100 Years to Collaborate
COVID-19 dealt our sector a complex challenge, but it has also been a catalyst for organizations to come together in ways not seen before. The Pistoia Alliance has been working on projects at the grassroots level of technology, which requires cross-industry collaboration, for more than a decade so we know it can be done. But to see it on this scale is a game-changer, and one we must continue in order to achieve innovations that are now within our grasp. Life science organizations, charities, diagnostics firms, governments, regulators, and academia have collaboratively focused their resources on vaccine and therapy development. Now, I am advocating life science organizations do not let this new mentality slip. Maintaining their willingness to work together in the hope of continuing to make breakthroughs at the pace of the last twelve months.
Just over 100 years ago the world experienced another pandemic and with the limited knowledge available, it pulled together then to mitigate the spread of influenza and treat the many millions affected. Similarly, during COVID-19, the incredible work of scientists around the globe has seen collaborative projects produce hugely valuable outcomes. From repurposed therapies to novel vaccines, the normal timeline of R&D has been accelerated beyond measure.
In the 100 years between these two world-changing events, we’ve learned a lot more about the science of pandemics. But we’ve learned far less about the art of collaboration. This must change. Let’s not wait another hundred years to collaborate but instead use what we’ve learned to build a better, more open pharma industry. You only have to look at the many viable vaccines produced in just ten short months, and the openness we’ve seen around sharing data and knowledge, to understand the value of working together to tackle big problems. Mindsets must change from ‘we should collaborate’ to ‘we must collaborate to save lives.’
Though COVID-19 has rightfully dominated agendas over the last year, society faces other multifaceted challenges that require a cross-disciplinary approach. From antibiotic resistance to treating dementias, to the effects of climate change on humans, solutions will only be found if experts from across industries and between organizations pool resources. In a post-COVID-19 world, stakeholders must look for further opportunities to collaborate and address the pre-existing hurdles to cooperative working that hinder progress. For example, though willingness to share data has increased, the infrastructure to allow organizations to safely share data is still lacking.
The rapid innovation in the life sciences industry throughout COVID-19 has also opened many people’s eyes to what the sector can achieve. The industry now needs to collectively use this interest to attract more people to a career in science, who might not previously have considered it. This includes new entrants to the sector, but also those with skills in other areas, like data scientists, or people from any level considering a career change. Now is the perfect time to attract fresh talent to the industry, nursing applications are up 32% indicating that many people are looking at how they can make their career choice more meaningful.
A global pandemic isn’t over until we have global solutions. In the past year, I have seen members of the Pistoia Alliance step up their efforts even further, and my hope is that all stakeholders now realize the value of cooperation in solving problems. We also have an opportunity to capitalize on the current interest in our industry by making sure that young people see biopharma as a place where minds meet and innovation happens.
The Pistoia Alliance now has over 150 members ranging from global organizations and medium enterprises, to start-ups and individuals – collaborating as equals on projects that generate value for the worldwide life sciences and healthcare community. At the Alliance, we’ll be continuing efforts with our collaborative projects, and encourage anyone interested to get involved now by sending an email to Membership@PistoiaAlliance.org.
The Pistoia Alliance launches user experience maturity model for life sciences
Boston, MA – (November 18, 2020): The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D, has launched a free to use UXLS (User Experience in Life Sciences) maturity model. The model will help companies understand what a user-centered design culture will look like for them, and their current trajectory. User experience (UX) is coming to the forefront in life sciences as companies undergoing digital transformation have begun to realize that there is no value in implementing new software unless researchers can use it fully. The UXLS maturity model enables organizations to measure the current state of their UX capability, with a framework to plan how to move onto the next stage.
“As more scientists than ever are now working outside the lab, and often at home during the pandemic, UX centered design is paramount for productivity and efficiency. COVID-19 has put even more pressure on researchers and created a more dispersed workforce. If these researchers are fighting to ensure the systems they use are working, they could be wasting hours of their time instead of undertaking valuable research,” commented Paula de Matos, Consultant at The Pistoia Alliance. “We have launched this model following the previous success of our UX toolkit for the life sciences community in the first phase of this project. This next stage helps organizations, projects or products clarify their ambition of further integration of UX activities and develop a step-by-step action plan.”
The framework has been designed specifically for life sciences organizations and is made up of three dimensions:
- Impact – What impact is UX having on the organisation or area?
- UX Metrics and Analytics – How are metrics collected and used? A systematic and iterative approach to measuring UX is something many organizations aspire to.
- Process – How are UX methodologies embedded into organizational or team processes?
Within these dimensions there are then five further stages of maturity, from a low level of one to a high level of maturity at five.
- What UX describes a state where there is little or no existence of UX at any of the dimensions.
- Isolated UX projects may have several UX projects running independently of each other. Much of this UX work may be reactive UX in the sense that teams are reacting to poorly designed solutions by bringing UX design into their delivery.
- Intentional UX investment reflects a state where the organisation starts to value and invest in UX capacity.
- Embedding UX into teams means that UX is now a part of each project delivery team and is proactively engaged from the beginning of each project.
- Transformational UX and services involves a higher level of UX engagement from senior leaders whereby UX is part of the company’s strategy and business value.
“In our personal lives we are surrounded by intuitive tech that ‘just works’. This same useability is now also expected in our professional lives as our reliance on digital technologies grows. The benefits of good UX in life sciences are significant and could impact the delivery of clinical trials, the development of the ‘lab of the future’, and enable more virtual and synthetic experiments to be conducted. We hope this maturity model helps companies identify where they currently are on the UX journey and provides a clear path on how they can progress towards transformational UX.”
The UXLS maturity model is available now and can be accessed here.
About The Pistoia Alliance
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members’ organization made up of life science companies, technology and service providers, publishers, and academic groups working to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D. It was conceived in 2007 and incorporated in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Its projects transform R&D through pre-competitive collaboration. It overcomes common R&D obstacles by identifying the root causes, developing standards and best practices, sharing pre-competitive data and knowledge, and implementing technology pilots. There are currently over 150 member companies; members collaborate on projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences R&D community, using The Pistoia Alliance’s proven framework for open innovation. For more information, please visit www.pistoiaalliance.org.
Media Contacts
Spark Communications
+44 207 436 0420
Contact Us
Tanya Randall
The Pistoia Alliance
+44 7887 811332
tanya.randall@pistoiaalliance.org
COVID-19 shows pharma’s willingness to share data, but highlights need for supporting infrastructure, warns The Pistoia Alliance
Boston, MA – (November 5th, 2020): The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D, held a virtual roundtable with leaders from global pharma organizations, including Gilead Sciences, Roche, and AbbVie, to discuss learnings to date from COVID-19. Attendees heard a call to action from the president of the Alliance, on the need for more companies to invest in and build on the work of the pharma and life sciences world so far. The participants also discussed the increased willingness to share data among companies but drew attention to the need for better collaboration infrastructure to make widespread data sharing a reality.
"During COVID-19, collaboration has been the lifeblood of R&D. From the outset, we've been dependent on working together – initially diagnostics in vivo and in vitro could only be done through government laboratories, and we also worked with the I-SPY network, the NIH and WHO to conduct trials. We couldn't have got to where we are now if we didn't all work together," commented Dr. Merdad Parsey, Chief Medical Officer at Gilead Sciences. "There is an opportunity for us all to get much better at data sharing and to develop this ethos, because we also need the expertise of those outside the industry to advance the causes we are working on right now and in the future."
The R&D leaders taking part in the roundtable on enabling collaborative research – learnings from COVID were:
- Dr. Steve Arlington, (Chair) President, Pistoia Alliance
- Manuel Guzman, President, CAS
- Thomas Hudson, SVP, R&D and Chief Scientific Officer, AbbVie
- Palani Kumaresan, Life Cycle Leader, Roche Diagnostics International
- Dr. Merdad Parsey, Chief Medical Officer, Gilead Sciences
- Bryn Roberts, SVP, Global Head of Operations for Pharma Research & Early Development, Roche
There was broad agreement among the panel on the need for a centralized data platform or repository to be developed where companies can share pre-competitive data easily. Several of the panel members agreed that getting data ‘back' from partners due to a lack of infrastructure had been a challenge. There was also consensus on the need to remove barriers to sharing information outside of the pharma ecosystem – for example to encourage data sharing between pharma companies and those in chemicals, technology, manufacturing, and supply chain, amongst others. This was further underlined by the discussion between the panel that all nations have faced huge challenges pulling together the various moving parts needed to get national testing programs up to speed. Finally, the participants also referenced the long-term impact that COVID-19 is set to have by discussing its influence on plans for the "next pandemic" currently being made.
"2020 has been a hugely challenging year for all of our members, but I've been blown away by the outstanding efforts to help humanity overcome the COVID-19 crisis. Between our members and beyond, the fruits of collaborative projects have underlined the very reason behind the founding of the Alliance," commented Dr. Steve Arlington, President, Pistoia Alliance. "We now need to bring other industries into the fold and be willing to work with those outside of our immediate circle, as well as create a long-term infrastructure for sharing data. Though it's an unprecedented time, we need to carry this momentum forward and ensure this collaborative instinct continues post-pandemic. We also need governments around the world to lead the charge; the importance of following the science remains paramount but a spirit of openness is required that allows us all to work together to understand the real reasons why we take a certain path and avoid the trap of politically motivated actions being blamed on science."
Looking to the future, digital technologies will be key to further breakthroughs and particularly important to help overcome the limitations caused by social distancing. The Pistoia Alliance launched a collaborative project in Summer 2020 to explore technology for collecting data during clinical trials in pursuit of this goal. Other digital technologies that can be applied during COVID-19 must also be investigated. Data collection and symptom monitoring will be critical to efforts to treat COVID-19, particularly as we still don't fully understand the virus.
You can access the recording of the roundtable on demand by clicking here.
About The Pistoia Alliance
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members' organization made up of life science companies, technology and service providers, publishers, and academic groups working to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D. It was conceived in 2007 and incorporated in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Its projects transform R&D through pre-competitive collaboration. It overcomes common R&D obstacles by identifying the root causes, developing standards and best practices, sharing pre-competitive data and knowledge, and implementing technology pilots. There are currently over 150 member companies; members collaborate on projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences R&D community, using The Pistoia Alliance's proven framework for open innovation. For more information, please visit www.pistoiaalliance.org.
Media Contacts
Spark Communications
+44 207 436 0420
Contact Us
Tanya Randall
The Pistoia Alliance
+44 7887 811332
tanya.randall@pistoiaalliance.org
Launch of Pistoia Alliance Chemical Safety Library powered by new CAS platform
Columbus, OH and Boston, MA – (October 19th, 2020): CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society specializing in scientific information solutions, and the Pistoia Alliance, a global non-profit that works to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D, today announced the launch of a new Pistoia Alliance Chemical Safety Library platform. This resource aims to mitigate the serious risks researchers working with potentially hazardous chemicals face due to unanticipated chemical reaction outcomes by enabling scientists to access and share hazardous reaction information drawn from real-life laboratory experiences. The new open access platform, developed and hosted by CAS, supports industry efforts to increase the safety of workers in the lab by facilitating data sharing across the global chemical enterprise. “We have a duty to ensure the health and safety of researchers dedicating their lives to delivering breakthrough innovations,” said Carmen Nitsche, General Manager Cambridge Crystallography Data Centre and Chair, Chemical Safety Library Advisory Panel, “The Chemical Safety Library fulfils an important need and adds a key component to our safety toolbox.”
The enhancement of this unique resource, originally launched by the Pistoia Alliance as a prototype in 2017, was made possible through a partnership between the Pistoia Alliance and CAS announced earlier this year. “CAS is committed to empowering researchers with the information they need to be successful in each phase of the innovation journey, and supporting laboratory safety is a crucial part of that,” said CAS President Manuel Guzman. “We are proud to contribute our technology capabilities and expertise in scientific information management to develop and grow this critical resource that has tremendous potential to eliminate repeat incidents by making this critical information more widely and readily available.”
The new platform allows researchers from across academia, industry and government institutions to access chemical safety incident information and confidently submit new hazardous reaction data. R&D organizations can also integrate the full library content into their knowledge centers and internal laboratory safety workflows. Reaction incident information is reviewed by an advisory panel including experts from ACS, CAS and the Pistoia Alliance management, as well as Pistoia Alliance member companies and outside experts.
“By providing researchers access to real world incident data, the Chemical Safety Library will prevent avoidable laboratory accidents every day,” noted Dr. Steve Arlington, President of the Pistoia Alliance. “I encourage researchers around the world to use this resource, make others aware of it and contribute to improving the safety of the chemical research community as a whole by sharing their experiences through the platform to protect others.”
Please visit the new Chemical Safety Library platform and for more information, visit our about page.
About CAS
CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society specializing in scientific information solutions, partners with R&D organizations globally to provide actionable insights that help them plan, innovate, protect their innovations, and predict how new markets and opportunities will evolve. Scientists, patent professionals and business leaders rely on CAS solutions and services to advise discovery and strategy. With more than 110 years’ experience, no one knows more about scientific information than CAS. For more information, please visit www.cas.org.
About The Pistoia Alliance
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members’ organization made up of life science and healthcare companies, technology and service providers, publishers, and academic and patient groups working to lower barriers to innovation in R&D. It was conceived in 2007 and incorporated in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Its projects transform R&D through pre-competitive collaboration. It overcomes common R&D obstacles by identifying the root causes, developing standards and best practices, sharing pre-competitive data and knowledge, and implementing technology pilots. There are currently over 150 member companies; members collaborate on projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences R&D community, using The Pistoia Alliance’s proven framework for open innovation. For more information, please visit www.pistoiaalliance.org.
Media Contacts
Spark Communications
+44 207 436 0420
Contact Us
Pistoia Alliance Launches Seed Fund to Drive Biopharma and Healthcare Innovation
Boston, 7 October 2020: The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D, today launched its new Innovation Seed Fund to finance early stage concepts in biopharma and healthcare. It aims to fund three to four new projects per year into research, prototypes, and proof of concepts (POC), lowering the risks of innovation for all stakeholders, while accelerating pre-competitive collaboration in R&D.
“The Innovation Seed Fund enables us to help organizations bring together the skills and funding they need to start new initiatives in healthcare and biopharma R&D regardless of their size, lowering the risks for the whole industry,” commented Dr. Steve Arlington, President of the Pistoia Alliance. “This is a great opportunity for us to support companies and patient-led groups exploring new ideas and will give Pistoia Alliance members visibility of unique and interesting initiatives. By enabling more POCs to be created from early stage ideas we hope it will allow many to reach the point where they can go on to gain venture capital investment or further momentum within our community. Currently, countless great ideas never reach fruition as innovators don’t have the initial funds to develop a POC.”
The Innovation Seed Fund will concentrate on ideas that align with one or more of its strategic areas of focus, including: empowering patients, emerging science and technology, R&D productivity and data standards and regulatory. The Pistoia Alliance Innovation Seed Fund has already received a number of innovative proposals that help patients gain more control over their healthcare journeys. Innovations such as new ways of conducting clinical trials are in demand by industry and patients alike; for example initiatives like wearable devices for clinical trials; connecting patients directly to clinical trials and the pharmaceutical industry as a whole; diagnostics in the home, and telemedicine aids. Projects such as these highlight the importance and value of the Alliance’s connected ecosystem of biopharma and healthcare members.
“The Innovation Seed Fund is to help advance ideas, develop strong business cases, and drive wider membership engagement into these projects,” commented Kathy Gibson, Innovation and Investment Advisor at Pistoia Alliance. “In this digital age there are so many opportunities to enhance the patient experience, this fund helps to make these initiatives feasible, lowering the risk and costs for individual businesses. On average, a quarter of startups fail in the first year, the Alliance is dedicated to preventing this from happening to innovations that can empower patients and improve healthcare and biopharma for all.”
The Pistoia Alliance has a great track record of helping innovative startups through its President’s Challenge. In the past four years, 20 finalists have gone on to raise more than $45 million in funding and employ over 200 people in the life sciences industry. To find out more about the fund or to pitch your idea please contact Kathy Gibson via innovate@pistoiaalliance.org.
About The Pistoia Alliance:
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members’ organization made up of life science companies, technology and service providers, publishers, and academic groups working to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D. It was conceived in 2007 and incorporated in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Its projects transform R&D through pre-competitive collaboration. It overcomes common R&D obstacles by identifying the root causes, developing standards and best practices, sharing pre-competitive data and knowledge, and implementing technology pilots. There are currently over 150 member companies; members collaborate on projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences R&D community, using The Pistoia Alliance’s proven framework for open innovation.
Media Contacts
Spark Communications
+44 207 436 0420
Contact Us
The Pistoia Alliance Announces Registrations are Open for its Virtual Conference Week
Boston, September 23 2020: The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D, today announced it has opened registration for its annual October conference. Held virtually this year, the conference comprises keynote presentations from industry leaders at organisations including Novartis and Roche. This is in addition to virtual networking opportunities and panel discussions on key industry topics such as the research collaboration around COVID-19, including vaccine development and diagnostics, in silico drug development and digital placebos. Stakeholders in life sciences and healthcare from all over the world can now register for this free week-long event, starting on October 19, here.
Keynote speakers include:
- Jay Bradner, President, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research
- Merdad Parsey, EVP and Chief Medical Officer, Gilead Sciences
- Andrew Plump, President, Research & Development, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company
- Thomas Hudson, SVP, R&D and Chief Scientific Officer, AbbVie
- Bryn Roberts, SVP, Global Head of Operations for Pharma Research & Early Development, Roche
Since it was founded over a decade ago, The Pistoia Alliance has operated as a virtual organisation, with the tools and platforms in place to ensure geographical location does not hamper collaboration. This includes online idea sharing and communications platforms for members and a regular programme of webinars and online educational workshops. This October conference builds on the success of the previous week of virtual events in June, which featured topics such as virtual clinical trials and FAIR ontologies mapping.
“We strongly believe the focus of R&D innovation should be on science, not geography,” commented Dr. Steve Arlington, President of The Pistoia Alliance. “Brexit and increasing country-centric policies globally have accelerated our commitment to ensuring that our members from all over the world can collaborate and innovate across borders. Offering a virtual format for everything we do is becoming ever more important, not just because of COVID-19, as ideas can be more easily shared and are accessible for all. This is crucial as our members are working closely together to combat COVID-19 and mitigate its impacts, and we hope this conference will help them prepare for what could be another challenging year – as well as be inspired by workshops on many of the future innovations that will change our industry for the better.”
The conference will feature a range of workshops and roundtables essential to anyone with an interest in life sciences. Sessions include, “R&D Leader Roundtable: Collaboration in Practice – learnings from COVID,” “How Can Digitised Data Improve Patient Outcomes and Enable Drug Discovery?” and “Challenges of Clinical Trial Design in a Pandemic.” In line with The Pistoia Alliance’s strategy refresh, there will be a particular focus on healthcare, including sessions on patient centricity, digital placebos, and digitising health data. The final day of the conference week will be dedicated to the Alliance’s projects and will include news of significant developments for the following initiatives:
- Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML)
- FAIR Implementation for Life Science Industry
- Hierarchical Editing Language for Macromolecules (HELM)
- Quality Generation and Ethical Use of Digital Health Data in Clinical Studies
“Due to COVID-19, virtual means of collaboration have become the new normal, so it’s great to see The Pistoia Alliance enabling key stakeholders to come together in this way,” commented Zahid Tharia, Conference and Events Lead at The Pistoia Alliance. “Working together has never been more important when it comes to R&D, making innovation and collaboration opportunities like this critical to finding treatments for COVID-19.”
The Pistoia Alliance invites anyone with an interest in life sciences or healthcare to come and get involved and register for the conference here.
Media Inquiries
Tanya Randall
Communications Lead
Contact Us