Author: David Prior
The Pistoia Alliance Announces Major Milestone in Unified Data Model Project to Promote Life Sciences Collaboration
Clarivate Analytics and the Pistoia Alliance – The Life Sciences Innovation Report
For a limited time, we are delighted to announce exclusive access for Pistoia Alliance members to Clarivate’s industry report:
A data-driven view of the emerging trends that are accelerating biopharmaceutical R&D innovation.
What is life science innovation and how do we track it?
The Life Sciences Innovation Report covers:
The Pistoia Alliance Calls for Greater Collaboration to Realise Benefits of Innovation and Announces Winners of the 2018 President’s Startup Challenge
Solutions in data management and breast cancer diagnosis are awarded for innovation while attendees discuss ways to help translate startup success to patient outcomes
Boston, 10 October, 2018 – The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not for profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life sciences R&D, today announced the winners of its 2018 President’s Startup Challenge, at its annual member conference in Boston. The Alliance also called for greater collaboration between stakeholders to realise the potential of new innovations and translate the benefits to patients. The grand prize winner is Riffyn, with the audience vote winner named as Breast IT. The two were chosen from five finalists, shortlisted from 19 challenge entries from around the world. In his opening remarks to more than 200 attendees, Dr Steve Arlington, President of The Pistoia Alliance, explained that the Alliance has now doubled the number of start-up members to 50, and is also seeking to work with more charities and patient groups in the year ahead.
“I congratulate Riffyn and Breast IT on their wins and look forward to seeing how all five of these dynamic young firms develop. The innovations we have seen this year from all of our start-ups have been very impressive, and the potential for improving global health is significant,” commented Dr Arlington. “All of us in the life sciences community have a role to play in ensuring that the fruits of these startups’ labours can reach and impact patients, and we must join forces to achieve this. Against today’s challenging global economic and political backdrop, this kind of coming together is even more important. The core aim of the Alliance is to improve collaboration between life science stakeholders, and by working with each other, we can truly change the lives of patients around the world and open the door to more breakthrough discoveries.”
The morning keynote was delivered by Dr Jim Sullivan, VP of Discovery at AbbVie. Dr Sullivan reflected on the startup successes he has seen throughout his career, and the technological advances driving change in R&D; such as the huge leaps that gene-editing technology like CRISPR offer and the role a of AI in drug discovery. Noting that the challenges ahead are so complex that no single company will be able to deliver alone, Dr Sullivan reiterated the Alliance’s call for the life science industry to find more ways to work together and realise the transformative potential of innovation.
The afternoon keynote was delivered by Dr Sally John, VP of Genomics and Computational Biology at Biogen, and a previous winner of the Suffrage Science award. Dr John spoke about Biogen’s successful public-private collaboration with the Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation, to improve the success rate for discovering new medicines. As a champion of open innovation and collaboration, Dr John also communicated to the audience the need to identify which questions you are seeking to answer and accept that you cannot answer all of them alone, by recognising that working together is the future of science.
The President’s Challenge is an annual award that rewards informatics and technology focused startups aiming to impact the way life science R&D is performed and brings their innovative solutions to the attention of the wider life sciences and healthcare industry. The grand prize winner, Riffyn, was selected by a panel of seven industry judges, and the audience vote winner, Breast IT, was chosen by The Pistoia Alliance’s members, following a live ‘shark tank’ pitch. The day before the final pitching, all five finalists attended a support and coaching day with Pistoia Alliance members. The two winners each receive $15,000, six months mentorship and support from a leading industry expert, and access to Monocl’s stakeholder platform. All finalists receive $5,000, and one year’s membership to The Pistoia Alliance. More detail on the five finalists follows:
- Riffyn is an Oakland, CA. startup helping scientists to deliver reproducible research; its cloud-based Riffyn SDE structures and links experimental designs and data across R&D teams for real-time analytics, supporting artificial intelligence and machine learning.
- BreastIT is a Ugandan startup dedicated to improving the diagnosis and survival of breast cancer in Africa; it has developed a handheld, pocket-sized ultrasound system that empowers radiologists to make focused assessments and accelerate treatment decisions at the point of care.
- UniteLabs is a Swiss startup and software company employing the latest robotic and networking technologies to empower life scientists with accessible automation solutions; its tools can be used from anywhere at any time, and via mobile and remote platforms.
- uFraction8 is a Scottish startup providing downstream cell separation technology to help businesses achieve sustainability; it targets microbes like micro algae, yeast and bacteria, sorting biomass from a culture medium with no harmful high shear processes.
- Clarity Genomics is a Belgian start-up providing predictive analytics for microbiome drug discovery; its platform learns how human microbiome communities interact with the host to facilitate biomarker discovery, patient stratification and therapeutic response evaluation.
For more information on the Pistoia Alliance, please visit: http://www.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 100 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
Carmen Nitsche
Pistoia Alliance
+001 510-589-3355
carmen.nitsche@pistoiaalliance.org
More Than Half of Life Science Organisations Already Using or Experimenting with Blockchain, up from Less Than a Quarter in 2017
While adoption of blockchain is on the rise, lack of skilled staff is hampering its development in the life science industry, finds survey from The Pistoia Alliance
Boston/London, 27th September, 2018: The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life sciences R&D, has today announced the results of a survey on the adoption of blockchain in the pharmaceutical and life science industries. According to the survey, 60 percent of pharmaceutical and life science professionals are either using or experimenting with blockchain today, compared to 22 percent when asked in 2017; however, 40 percent are not currently looking at implementing, or have no plans to implement blockchain. The biggest barriers identified to adoption are access to skilled blockchain personnel (55 percent), and that blockchain is too difficult to understand (16 percent). These factors underline why The Pistoia Alliance is calling for the life science and pharmaceutical industries to collaborate over the development and implementation of blockchain.
“We must ensure that the life science industry has access to the right skills and staff to bring their blockchain projects to fruition, particularly looking to the technology industry to fill the blockchain talent gap. This knowledge will be particularly useful for the 18 percent of life science professionals who admitted to knowing nothing about blockchain. The potential to enhance collaboration and, therefore, innovation is huge“, commented Dr Steve Arlington, President of The Pistoia Alliance. “Blockchain provides an additional layer of trust for scientists and their organisations. We hope the security benefits of the technology help to lessen reticence over sharing and transferring data or information, and will facilitate further cross-industry collaboration and knowledge sharing. We believe blockchain will open up new opportunities for the industry to begin sharing data more securely to advance drug discovery, ultimately making patients’ lives better.”
The survey also showed life science and pharmaceutical professionals are becoming more aware of the capabilities of blockchain. Respondents believed the greatest opportunities for using blockchain lie in the medical supply chain (30 percent), electronic medical records (25 percent), clinical trials management (20 percent), and scientific data sharing (15 percent). Of the benefits of blockchain, life science and pharmaceutical professionals believe the most significant is the immutability of data (73 percent). Significantly, for an industry with tight regulations, 39 percent also believe the transparency of the blockchain system is its best feature. However, almost one fifth (18 percent) of professionals believe using blockchain adds no value beyond a traditional database, showing there is some reluctance in the industry to use the technology. The Pistoia Alliance believes that some of the misconceptions about blockchain can be overcome with greater education of those in industry.
“As life science and pharmaceutical organisations are beginning to look at implementing or experimenting with blockchain, The Pistoia Alliance is working hard to inform organisations on how to implement it safely and effectively,” commented Dr Richard Shute, consultant for The Pistoia Alliance. “We are currently focusing on educating scientists and researchers about the potential uses of blockchain technologies outside of the supply chain, particularly in R&D. At The Pistoia Alliance, we want to support our members’ initiatives in blockchain, as well as provide a secure global forum for partnerships and collaboration. I would encourage anyone in the life science industry with an interest to join our Blockchain Bootcamp in October, and Alliance members to get involved in our blockchain community, to share knowledge and best practice.”
The Pistoia Alliance is continuing its drive to educate the life science industry about blockchain. You can join The Pistoia Alliance’s two-day Blockchain Bootcamp on the 8th and 9th October in Boston. The event will consist of an introduction to the Hyperledger platform, as well as a mini hackathon incorporating a range of life science use cases, which will allow participants to code their own blockchain-enabled apps in teams. For more information on the event and to register, see here.
A survey of 170 senior pharmaceutical and life science professionals was conducted via webinar in September 2018. You can view the slides and a recording from the webinar.
— 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 80 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.
President’s Challenge 2018 – Finalists Announced
We are delighted to announce the 5 finalists for the Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge 2018.
This year we have solutions covering Diagnostics for research, microbiome analysis, laboratory of the future and bioprocessing technology.
You can find out more about each finalist below.
Please contact me directly if you’d like to be put in touch with a particular startup here.
After a support day on the 9th October with experts from our industry, they will present their pitches at our members US Conference in Boston on October 10th.
The finalists are:
BreastIT is a portable diagnosis tool for breast abnormalities as cancer. It’s a handheld, pocket sized photo-acoustic imaging system that empowers radiologists to make focused assessments and accelerate treatment decisions at the point of care. radiologists can be able to take decisive action, refer patients quickly, optimize the course of treatment reducing the overall cost of care in low resource settings.
As breast IT accelerates the rate of early breast cancer detection, its primary impact is increasing the survival rate of women who live with the condition. The portability of the device means that especially women in poor and rural areas are able to benefit from the technology. The team has high ambitions, hoping to launch their product worldwide and then use the data collected to support academic research of breast cancer.
Clarity Genomics provides host-microbiome data analysis and interpretation services for clinical research with expertise in longitudinal microbiome-metabolome interactions. Clarity Genomics supports translational and clinical development programs leveraging the therapeutic and diagnostic potential of the host microbiome.
The cloud-based Riffyn Scientific Development Environment structures and links experimental designs and data across R&D teams for real-time analytics.For two decades R&D digitization has focused on ELN, LIMS, and SDMS for experiment data capture. This resulted in fragmented data silos and systems, and neglected the most important piece of the puzzle: design and analysis of the scientific processes across the R&D lifecycle. Traditional approaches don’t connect the dots from hypothesis to observations to traceable scientific decisions. Riffyn returns focus to the scientific process itself with its paradigm-changing data system, Riffyn Scientific Development Environment (SDE). It is for global R&D organizations who need more productive, more reliable science. The Riffyn SDE takes you from laboratory data collection to machine learning in 30 seconds.
uFraction8 is developing a solution designed to address the need for a scalable, low energy primary recovery solution for bioproducers using unicellular cultures. Using massively multiplexed modular microfluidic arrays, the power of microfluidics can be scaled to address the needs of industry. Our solution exploits hydrodynamic effects to gently separate cells from liquid flows that are confined to uniquely designed flow channels. uFraction8’s systems allow for a single step dewatering system, while delivering substantial energy savings, reducing labour and material transfer and, increasing yield by using a uniquely low shear flow regime. We can save 75% of the primary recovery costs compared to conventional techniques.
UniteLabs is a software company that focuses on developing easy-to-use, reusable and flexible automation that adapts to the ever-changing needs of life science research. Thanks to the open ecosystem, their customers can add devices and repurpose the laboratory automation without further assistance or service fees. This allows for mixing and matching of any instrument or information system and operating it by the intuitive software that does not require any training. Currently, UniteLabs is leading a collaborative initiative to develop self-driving lab robots.
If you’d like to know more about the Pistoia Alliance’s startup challenges and similar events, contact David Proudlock.
Pistoia Alliance adds a Startup Support Day for this year’s President’s Challenge Finalists
In our drive to encourage and support the informatics and technology focused life-science startup community and bring the best of those companies to the attention of our membership. We are adding an additional reward for the five finalists of this year’s President’s Startup Challenge.
We are going to provide a day of coaching and support for the five startup finalists. The concept is a shared learning format where the startups will receive coaching and support from industry experts picked from the Pistoia Alliance members. We believe this will help hone their pitch for the final, add valuable knowledge and insight on our unique industry and provide further valuable networking opportunities.
This event will happen on October 9th, the day before the final at the conference in Boston.
We aim to help the startups with sessions on areas such as:
- Honing the pitch for the final
- Investor feedback – advice and guidance from experts on their business models, proposals etc.
- Would Pharma buy it? A chance to gain feedback on your model from leading Pharma professionals
- Skills masterclass: guest speakers with discussion on making a success of your business in the life sciences industry
(Exact details to be finalised)
If you believe this would benefit your startup alongside the prizes below, then enter here (link removed)
Prizes:
Two winners will receive:
- $20,000
- 6 months mentorship and support from a leading industry expert
- Access to Monocl’s stakeholder platform
All finalists will receive
- $5,000
- Invite to our startup support day (detailed above)
- Opportunity to attend our US conference where they will pitch to win the event and the resultant networking at the event with over 200 industry professionals
- 1 year’s membership to the Pistoia Alliance.
President’s Startup Challenge – Deadline extended until Friday 7 September
We have decided to extend the deadline for applications this Friday 7th September.
This was due to a number of requests for an extension due to return from the summer holidays, labor day and conflicting work priorities.
If you are still interested in entering the competition, now is your chance to get to our US conference in Boston and pitch to over 200 industry experts from big pharma, leading lifescience software and information vendors and investors.
The prizes are:
For the two winners:
- $20,000 (for the two winners)
- 6 months mentorship from a leading industry expert from the Pistoia Alliance membership
- One year’s access to Monocl’s stakeholder platform
- Pitching and networking at our annual US conference (with over 200 industry experts and influencers)
- One year’s membership to the Pistoia Alliance
For the runners ups:
- $5,000
- Pitching and networking at our annual US conference (with over 200 industry experts and influencers)
- One year’s membership to the Pistoia Alliance
Eligibility:
Startups who have:
- An informatics or technology focused product aiming to transform lifescience R&D that has been on the market less than 3 years
- Less than 50 employees
- Sales less than $1,000,000 per annum
To find out more and enter, go here
Good luck.
Chemical Safety Library – Number of Reactions Increases
The Alliance is seeking a strategic partner to develop the CSL Service in its next phase to support the Lab of The Future
Boston/London, XX August, 2018: The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not for profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life sciences R&D, is today announcing a number of milestones in its Chemical Safety Library (CSL) Service project, launched in March 2017. The CSL, which captures, stores and shares hazardous reaction information to improve laboratory safety, has seen a four-fold increase in the number of chemical incidents recorded, with a total of 138 reactions now added. In the year since its launch, over 1,000 people have registered to access the CSL database. Furthermore, all chemical reaction data in the CSL is now available in PubChem, NBCI’s database of chemical compounds used daily by researchers, scientists, and academics, with new CSL Service incident data automatically added to PubChem.
“The Chemical Safety Library has had a fantastic start – with the number of registrations showing the scientific community’s interest in ways to ensure lab safety,” commented Steve Arlington, President of The Pistoia Alliance. “Safety is everyone’s responsibility, but this type of crowd-sourced, community-based sharing is most valuable when users are engaged and involved. We are continually working to ensure the service is user-friendly, and we are now looking to collaborate with a strategic partner to continue developing the CSL. The Pistoia Alliance’s belief is that collaboration improves every area of research and development in life sciences – from innovation in lab safety to adopting next generation technologies like AI. Ultimately, this will help researchers meet the greatest unmet needs in areas such as precision medicine.”
The CSL Service is a resource for researchers to check chemical reactions and share previously inaccessible hazardous reaction info, with the hope of preventing repeat chemical incidents. Its role has been extended further as the scientific community develops the ‘Lab of The Future’ (LoTF). The Pistoia Alliance hosted it’s annual President’s Series Hackathon earlier this year to encourage stakeholders from the life sciences, healthcare and technology industries, as well as academia, to use the CSL Service data alongside technology that will feature in the LoTF. A group from the University of Southampton won the hackathon by integrating CSL data into Amazon Alexa – giving researchers the ability to simply speak to their surroundings for safety data. As the LoTF advances with new innovations, being able to access data in new ways – such as voice – will become invaluable to researchers.
“The data from the Chemical Safety Library has been extremely useful for our students,” commented Prof. Jeremy G Frey, Professor of Physical Chemistry, University of Southampton. “The students really enjoyed participating in the hackathon and have found it informative and enjoyable working with the team at The Pistoia Alliance. It helped the students think about data differently – developing applications to disseminate essential safety information in a more convenient format, while considering how technology will impact the LoTF. New channels, such as voice, are being more widely implemented in research environments as younger scientists entering the industry want to use the slick technologies they are familiar with from outside of the lab, to support their work.”
“After speaking with members, we discovered chemical incidents were still happening even where due diligence and other safety procedures, such as checking the material safety data sheet (MSDS) had been followed – showing how valuable the CSL resource is,” commented Gabrielle Whittick, Project Manager, Chemical Safety Library (CSL) Service at The Pistoia Alliance “In addition, we want to continue to change the culture around safety and ensure individuals and companies are empowered to share potentially harmful incidents in a way the entire industry can access. Our upcoming datathon will help inform students about the CSL service as well as collecting new examples of hazardous reactions. We urge any individuals and institutions with interest in supporting lab safety to come forward and get involved.”
The Pistoia Alliance is hosting a datathon at University College London on 21st September 2018 for postgraduate students, postdocs, CDTs, and librarians. To learn more about the datathon and how to participate in the CSL community, visit: http://www.pistoiaalliance.org/eventdetails/pistoia-alliance-chemical-safety-library-datathon/
To discuss becoming a strategic partner for the Chemical Safety Library Service, please contact Carmen Nitsche (carmen.nitsche@pistoiaalliance.org)
A full .csv file with all the data in the CSL is available on request from The Pistoia Alliance. To access the CSL Service and to input your own incident information, visit: http://www.pistoiaalliance.org/projects/chemical-safety-library/
— 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 80 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.
Monocl Supporting this year’s President’s Startup Challenge
We are delighted to announce in addition to our cash awards and mentoring, 2016 finalists Monocl are providing a full one year license to their stakeholder platform for the winners of the Grand and Audience Prizes . These will benefit to our 2018 startup winners and help them continue their journey to transform lifescience R&D.
Monocl enables life science professionals to work smarter with the right stakeholders. Their cloud-based stakeholder platform empowers you to find, prioritize and build closer relationships with the right stakeholders, regardless if you are working with medical or scientific experts, opinion leaders, physicians, investigators, prospects or customers.
The platform offers unparalleled global coverage and contains millions of intuitive stakeholder profiles, each offering a 360-degree perspective to help you understand relevant research, key collaborations, business relationships and much more to maximize your efficiency, decision-making and business performance.
If you want to have a chance to win this prize alongside $20,000 and 6 months mentorship and support from a leading industry expert, enter this year’s President’s Startup Challenge, entries close September 3.
Entries now closed.
HELM is now a FAIR standard
Public information is only useful if it is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). The Pistoia Alliance was pleased to organise with the support of our friends at the Hyve the recent FAIR workshop in Utrecht, and is committed to promoting FAIR principles among the life science community.
Fairsharing.org provides a resource that allows scientists to browse standards, databases and data policies. Part of ELIXIR, Fairsharing.org has more than 1,000 standards and we are pleased to announce that HELM is now available in this collection.
HELM (Hierarchical Editing Language for Macromolecules) enables the representation of a wide range of biomolecules (e.g. proteins, nucleotides, antibody drug conjugates) whose size and complexity render existing small-molecule and sequence-based informatics methodologies impractical or unusable. HELM solves this problem through a hierarchical notation that represents complex macromolecules as polymeric structures and includes support for unnatural components (e.g. unnatural amino acids) and chemical modifications.
To see the Pistoia Alliance HELM FAIR entry please visit https://fairsharing.org/bsg-s001222/, or to find out more, go to OpenHELM.org.
The Pistoia Alliance Launches the 2018 President’s Startup Challenge
London, 24 July 2018: The Pistoia Alliance has announced today that entries for its 2018 President’s Startup Challenge are now open, and will close on Monday, 3rd September 2018. The annual competition is open to informatics and technology startups who are aiming to overcome obstacles to advancing life science R&D. Two of the winners will win $20,000, along with a six-month mentorship with industry professionals from companies including top ten pharmas and other successful startups and access to Monocl’s stakeholder platform. The remaining finalists will each receive $5,000 towards the further development of their solutions.
The prestigious competition offers the chance for five finalists to pitch their solutions in-person to a panel of industry judges and experts at The Pistoia Alliance’s annual US conference in Boston, MA, on 10th October, 2018. Entries are welcome from global startups on a range of themes; previous years have included those focused on AI, deep and machine learning, the IoT, blockchain, voice technology, and clinical trial platforms. Previous winners of the President’s Startup Challenge have included US startups, Pine Biotech and Medley Genomics, and French startup, Medexprim.
Dr Patrice Milos, Co-Founder and CEO of Medley Genomics, and President’s Start-up Challenge Grand Prize Winner in 2017, said of her win, “As a startup aiming to accelerate precision cancer therapies through deep data analytics to better understand the patient, we were honoured to be recognised by such an important organisation transforming healthcare across the biopharma industry, as The Pistoia Alliance.”
Dr Steve Arlington, President of The Pistoia Alliance, commented, “The productivity crisis that has challenged the pharmaceutical industry for many years shows no sign of easing. The Pistoia Alliance sees the startup community as a crucial resource to tackle this crisis, and we must support it and improve collaboration across the board. The President’s Challenge allows us to see first hand the innovation which is taking place inside these startups and align our projects with the technology of the future.”
For more details about the challenged and information on how to enter, visit the competition website at: http://www.pistoiaalliance.org/projects/presidents-challenge-2018/.