The December 2016 edition of the Pistoia Alliance newsletter, Innovation in Action, is available to download as a PDF document.
Author: David Prior
Agenda announced for our European Conference 2017 in London
A mobile app for iOS and Android is available for this event, containing the agenda, directions, floor plans, and other useful information. For users of other types of smartphone a subset of the app content is shown below.
We are pleased to announce the outline agenda for our 2017 European Conference , “Getting the most of outcomes data in R&D – a community conversation”. If you’d like to attend, please register now! The conference is being held at the Amba Hotel Charing Cross, London, UK. A selection of hotel room blocks have been made available for the benefit of delegates.
Connecting outcomes data more closely with the R&D process would help pharmaceutical companies focus their research efforts and make better decisions at earlier stages in development. Data on patient benefit from an intervention or diagnostic drives commercial outcomes in that it informs and contributes to health technology assessment and payer approval. Achieving this is technologically challenging and would benefit substantially from industry-wide pre-competitive collaboration. How can the Pistoia Alliance add value?
When registering, please select your preferred breakout group:
- Patient data capture, management, the associated technologies and standards required, and their optimal deployment
- Data analysis and opportunities, such as deep machine learning
- Future thinking, such as cutting edge therapeutics, companion diagnostics, reality mining, ethics, etc.
Event sponsors:
Here is the planned agenda for Tuesday 28th March – open to members and invited guests only. All events in the Ballroom (unless otherwise indicated):
- 9.00 Registration and Coffee
- 9.30 President’s introduction
- 9.40 Success story: quattro, Roche, and HELM
- 9.45 Portfolio update
- 10.15 Keynote 1 – Data Analysis
- Cathy Critchlow, VP, Center for Observational Research, Amgen
- 11.00 Coffee
- 11.30 Keynote 2 – Patient Data Capture
- Nick Davies, Managing Director Life Sciences, Accenture Strategy
- 12.15 Panel
- Jackie Hunter, CEO, BenevolentBio (Panel chair)
- Tjeerd van Staa, Professor of Health eResearch, University of Manchester
- Lindsay Edwards, Head, Respiratory Data Sciences Group, GSK
- Sean Ward, CTO, Synthace
- Angeli Möller, IT Business Partner, Clinical Sciences, Bayer Business Services
- 13.15 Lunch (Terrace, overflow in Regency)
- 14.15 Breakouts
- Patient data capture, led by Ian Shafer, Accenture (Nelson)
- Data analysis, led by Chris Molloy, Medicines Discovery Catapult
- Future thinking, led by Gareth King, Catapult Ventures (Trafalgar)
- 15.15 Breakout regrouping
- 15.45 Coffee
- 16.15 Hackathon update
- 16.40 Keynote 3 – Future Thinking
- James Weatherall, Executive Director & Head, Advanced Analytics Centre, AstraZeneca
- 17.25 President’s closing notes
- 17.30 Reception (Regency)
If you haven’t already registered for our European conference then please register now!
Please note that the conference is open only to Pistoia Alliance members and invited special guests.
Case Studies
A selection of case studies from the conference app are reproduced here for your reference.
Extra information for Pistoia Alliance board members only
- Hackathon: Saturday-Sunday 25th-26th March, Wallacespace Clerkenwell. Separate registration required
- AbVance project team meeting: Tuesday 28th March, 8am-9.30am, Amba Hotel Charing Cross (Nelson)
- Board, Ops and Advisory Board Dinner: Tuesday 28th March, 6.30pm for 7pm, The Langham Hotel (Surrey Room)
- Board Meeting: Wednesday 29th March, 8.30am-12.30pm, Amba Hotel Charing Cross (Watergate)
- Innovation Committee Meeting: Wednesday 29th March, 2pm-4pm, Amba Hotel Charing Cross (Watergate)
- Investment Committee Meeting: Wednesday 29th March, 1.30pm-3.30pm, Amba Hotel Charing Cross (Boardroom)
- Advisory Board Meeting: Wednesday 29th March, 10am-5pm, Amba Hotel Charing Cross (Nelson)
- Ops Meeting: Thursday 30th March, 8am-1pm, Institute of Directors, Pall Mall
Pine Biotech and Medexprim Selected as Grand Prize Winners in the 2016 Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge
Innovative startups demonstrate cutting-edge methods of harnessing and using scientific big data to accelerate research
Boston, 19th October, 2016 – The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not for profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life sciences R&D, has today announced that Pine Biotech and Medexprim have been selected as the grand prize winners of its 2016 President’s Startup Challenge. The two startups were chosen from a list of five finalists, following a live ‘Shark Tank’ pitching event at the Pistoia Alliance’s 2016 member conference in Boston. Pine Biotech and Medexprim will both receive an award of $15,000 and six months one-to-one mentorship from a Pistoia Alliance member; in addition to six months access to Clarivate Analytics’ life science content assets. All five finalists receive a $5,000 award and one year’s free membership of the Pistoia Alliance.
Pine Biotech is a US startup that specialises in big data analysis and data mining in biomedicine. It has developed a SaaS platform, T-BioInfo, powered by advanced machine learning capabilities. T-BioInfo supports diverse teams, including biologists and bioinformaticians, to get more out of their data, enabling the discovery of molecules, vaccines, and new cellular pathways.
Medexprim is a French startup that has developed a platform, the Radiomics Enabler®, which gives researchers new ways to exploit their medical image archives. The Radiomics Enabler® platform automates the laborious task of image extraction, and combines images with other medical information, such as lab results or genomics data. It significantly reduces the time and effort required of researchers, allowing them to better exploit their data in research projects.
“Both Pine Biotech and Medexprim pitched cutting-edge solutions that meet the core aim of the Pistoia Alliance – to lower the barriers which hamper innovation in life sciences R&D,” commented Dr Steve Arlington, President of the Pistoia Alliance. “All five finalists embody the dynamism and entrepreneurship that is a vital part of the life sciences industry. Collecting and analysing both structured and unstructured big data, presents a significant challenge to the industry. Meeting this challenge will demand the kind of innovative solutions that Pine Biotech and Medexprim have developed. In collaboration with the rest of the industry, innovators such as our finalists will be essential in helping the life sciences community unlock the value of the data it produces.”
The other three President’s Startup Challenge finalists were:
- Insightomics – helps life sciences R&D discover actionable patterns by blending interactive visualizations with state-of-the-art machine learning and statistical methods in a big data platform. The Insightomics Platform is an engine for creating visually rich, intuitive, and interactive bioinformatics apps – BioApps.
- Monocl EGO – is a new ground-breaking cloud-based analytics platform specifically designed to help pharmaceutical professionals working with R&D informatics, competitive intelligence, medical affairs, strategic planning and other important business functions gain key insights and make smarter decisions.
- Pharmacelera – is a company that develops disruptive hardware/software solutions to increase the productivity of pharmaceutical R&D. Pharmacelera’s products tackle both quality and speed in the initial stages of drug discovery through a unique and proprietary molecular analysis engine and the usage of hardware accelerators.
The President’s Startup Challenge is an annual award which aims to support startups to transform life sciences R&D through two main themes, which include:
- Bringing benefit through data to R&D for the scientist: Managing and handling data through networks, infrastructure and cloud; unravelling complexity of data and securing data.
- Enabling the Internet of Things for life science research: Innovative devices and/or mobile technologies that enable or transform R&D laboratories and processes.
Following initial shortlisting in round one, the five finalists presented a five-minute pitch, followed by a three-minute Q&A to the audience of the Pistoia Alliance’s member conference and a judging panel of seven senior life sciences executives. Audience members then chose a favourite pitch to support the judging panel’s decision on the two main winners. For more information on the Pistoia Alliance and The President’s Challenge, please visit: http://www.pistoiaalliance.org/projects/pistoia-alliance-presidents-startup-challenge-2016/
–ENDS–
About The Pistoia Alliance:
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members’ organisation 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.
Media Contacts:
Carmen Nitsche
Pistoia Alliance
+001 510-589-3355
carmen.nitsche@pistoiaalliance.org
Michelle Allison
Spark Communications
+44 207 436 0420
michelle@sparkcomms.co.uk
Finalists selected for the President’s Startup Challenge 2016
We are delighted to announce the 5 finalists for the Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge 2016. They show innovative solutions that demonstrate how the harnessing and utilisation of scientific data will truly advance scientific research and development in this age of exponential data creation.
The finalists are:
Insightomics helps life sciences R&D discover actionable patterns by blending interactive visualizations with state-of-the-art machine learning and statistical methods in a big data platform. The Insightomics Platform is an engine for creating visually rich, intuitive, and interactive bioinformatics apps – BioApps.
BioApp Creator is a software tool which will enable researchers without coding skills to create functionally- relevant BioApps. Through an easy-to-use web-based user interface, they will be able to create apps which are visualization-focused by nature, and integrate transparently with underlying bioinformatics methods.
Thanks to its web application Radiomics Enabler®, Medexprim gives hospitals and researchers new capabilities to efficiently and securely exploit their medical image archives for research and to valorize these resources within external collaborations. Medexprim contributes to accelerating medical research and helps researchers to find and validate new imaging biomarkers.
Monocl EGO is a new groundbreaking cloud-based analytics platform specifically designed to help pharmaceutical professionals working with R&D informatics, competitive intelligence, medical affairs, strategic planning and other important business functions gain key insights and make smarter decisions.
Through a sophisticated machine learning architecture – currently based on publications, clinical trials, financial payments and investment data – we have generated more than 6 million profiles of scientific experts and indexed 130+ million collaborations between these experts. The platform helps users find and evaluate relevant experts in a groundbreaking manner, as well as reach out to them through an intelligent relational approach.
Pharmacelera (www.pharmacelera.com) is a Computer-Aided Drug Design software company that develops disruptive hardware / software solutions to increase the productivity of pharmaceutical R&D. Pharmacelera’s products tackle both quality and speed in the initial stages of drug discovery through a unique and proprietary molecular analysis engine and the usage of hardware accelerators. Pharmacelera’s products, PharmScreen and PharmQSAR, are based on algorithms that use a full 3D representation of all the relevant interaction fields. This technology enables finding leads with higher accuracy and chemical diversity than traditional shape/structure-based solutions.
Pine Biotech is developing an integrative multi-omics, cloud-based analytics platform that can map complex networks of molecular signaling pathways and identify key nodes. The product provides advanced machine- learning capabilities to diverse teams including biologists and bioinformaticians. The T-Bio.info platform combines education, intuitive pipeline-building environment assisted by artificial intelligence and methods covering most omics data types – transcriptomics, genomics, metabilomics, proteomics, microbiome, structural biology and integration. The goal of our product is to train research teams and empower them to get more out of their data.
If you’d like to know more about the Pistoia Alliance’s startup challenges, contact David Proudlock.
Innovation in Action, September 2016
The September 2016 edition of the Pistoia Alliance newsletter, Innovation in Action, is available to download as a PDF document.
Thomson Reuters to Offer Startup Package to President’s Challenge Winners
The Pistoia Alliance are delighted to announce an exciting additional award for the 2016 President’s Challenge from Thomson Reuters.
The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters is pleased to offer 6 months of free access to our Life Sciences content assets to the winners of the Grand Prize and Audience Vote of the Pistoia Alliance President’s Challenge. Our commitment to accelerating innovation in support of the Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Biomedical research communities is being made to these President Challenge winners through access to our authoritative, trusted content available in the following products:
- INTEGRITY: Essential knowledge to empower your drug discovery and development
- CORTELLIS COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE: Expert insight and pharma intelligence for competitive analysis
- CORTELLIS CLINICAL TRIALS INTELLIGENCE: Accelerate clinical trial development decisions and portfolio strategy
- CORTELLIS REGULATORY INTELLIGENCE: A single, comprehensive source of global regulatory information
- NEWPORT SOURCING: Powerful integrated API intelligence with unique analysis
- Corresponding APIs (where available): Seamless, real-time access to the most trusted life sciences intelligence on the market
The winners can choose to access any of these sources, invaluable information of experimental drugs, drug properties, drug targets, drug effects, global drug pipeline, global clinical trials, global regulatory requirements, patents, literature, support for generic manufacturers, and gene variant relationships to disease and drug response. The content will be made available via online portal access and/or through programmatic API’s, upon entering a license agreement after being awarded a winner of the Pistoia Alliance President’s Challenge.
Enter now via http://presidents2016.startupcompete.co
Pistoia Alliance Welcomes New Members
New members include Accenture and a number of start-ups
Wilmington, DE – The Pistoia Alliance, an organization dedicated to improving global life sciences R&D, has seen its membership increase with a number of new members including both large multinationals and start-ups.
The new members include Accenture, Linguamatics, Novaseek, Repositive, Agrimetrics and Daniel Taylor. Existing members upgrading to the new Startup membership category this quarter include KNIME, Scitegrity, Databiology, The Hyve, Binocular Vision, BioVariance, and Promeditec. This takes the membership of the Pistoia Alliance to over 80 globally, which includes many of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, many of the most innovative start-ups and companies and organizations that support the life sciences sector.
Dr. Steve Arlington, Pistoia Alliance President said: “I am delighted to see that the Pistoia Alliance continues to show strong growth across all segments in life sciences, and we continue to attract a broad range of members. At the same time, we are also changing how we operate. Our challenge is to promote and encourage pre-competitive collaboration between our members, to benefit our members and ultimately accelerate the delivery of new drugs, devices and services to enhance performance within the sector. The Pistoia Alliance is well placed to help life sciences tackle many of its challenges and through our new strategy and the continued support of our members we will continue to support the global life sciences industry.”
Dr. Jane Reed, Head of Life Science Strategy at Linguamatics commented: “We’re pleased to join the Pistoia Alliance and be part of a community that supports the global life science industry, an area Linguamatics has worked in for nearly 15 years. We look forward to bringing our expertise in text mining and natural language processing to the table and contribute to understanding how together we can tackle pharma’s big data challenges.”
2016 saw the Pistoia Alliance adopt a new strategy which has seen an increased focus on start up companies and supporting innovation. This has seen the launch of the President’s Start-Up Challenge and the Pistoia Alliance Mini Start-Up Challenge. Alongside this, the Alliance has continued to develop and support innovative new projects to support life sciences globally.
Pistoia Alliance Launches 2016 Startup Challenge
Contest will see startup companies compete to develop new ways to improve innovation in life sciences R&D
Wilmington, DE – The Pistoia Alliance, an organization dedicated to improving global life sciences R&D has launched its 2016 President’s Startup Challenge, which will see startup companies from around the world compete for cash prizes and mentorship from senior Pistoia Alliance members.
The competition, now in its second year, will see startup companies compete on a number of themes. These include:
- Bringing Benefit through Data to R&D for the Scientist
- Enabling the Internet of Things for Life Science Research
- Developing Low Cost R&D for the Developing World
Steve Arlington, Pistoia Alliance President said: “With nearly 90% of all data having been created in the past two years, we need new techniques and approaches to manage this explosion in the amount of data now available. The Pistoia Alliance sees the startup community as a crucial resource to tackle this. Startup companies are now providing much of the innovation needed in the life sciences sector, but these companies can face a huge number of challenges. Through the Startup Challenge we aim to support these companies and ensure their innovative new technologies are understood and adopted by the life sciences industry.
“Alongside the cash prize, our winners and finalists will also have access to the expertise of the Pistoia Alliance’s senior membership. This mentorship, coupled with financial support, will give the winners and finalists a significant commercial boost.”
The Grand Prize Winner will receive $15,000, and up to two hours free mentoring support per week for up to six months. Alongside this, there will also be an audience vote, where the winner will receive the same as the Grand Prize winner. In addition, up to five finalists will receive a cash prize of $5,000.
The Grand Finalists and Audience Choice will be announced at the Pistoia US Conference in Boston on the 18th October 2016. The deadline for entries is September 2nd 2016.
The Pistoia Alliance established the President’s Startup Challenge in 2015 with a remit to support start up companies in improving life sciences R&D and improving innovation.
For more details about the contest, including full terms and conditions and information on how to enter, visit the competition website.
The Chemical Safety Library project announces RFP to build a hazardous reaction database
The Chemical Safety Library project (CSL) is pleased to release an RFP to build a prototype tool that will be used to enter new hazardous reaction information, store it and enable simple searching on the data held. The vision for the tool, being to make previously unaccessible hazardous reaction information available to the right people at the right time.
This follows work done by CSL project team members to develop a pilot spreadsheet based on the example used by BMS and shared with the project. The team shared, and took the best ideas from each others process for capturing hazardous reaction information and built on the BMS example spreadsheet, with additional fields and associated metadata.
The pilot database developed by the project team has been used to capture example hazardous reaction data offered by team members and now needs to be developed further and made available to a wider audience.
It is the intention to host the prototype on the Pistoia Alliance website and to allow open access, provided the user follows the initial simple registration process, that enables entries to be traced back to the submitter, if more information is needed. A small group of volunteers from the community of interest, will act as a review group for new entries and to maintain the integrity of the data.
During the first twelve months of hosting the prototype, its use will be monitored and a strategy developed for its commercialisation and to maximise the value of the information captured.
It is expected that the development work, following this RFP process could start mid-September and the prototype be ready for use at the end of November .
If you are interested in applying to the RFP , please see the URS supporting the development of the tool and use the contact below if you have any questions.
Contacts:
gabrielle.whittick@pistoiaalliance.org (Project Manager)
mark.manfredi@pistoiaalliance.org (Project Lead)
Documents:
Agenda announced for our US Conference 2016 in Boston
A mobile app for iOS and Android is available for this event, containing the agenda, directions, floor plans, and other useful information. For users of other types of smartphone a subset of the app content is shown below.
The Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center has complimentary wireless internet throughout the property. Guests accessing any Seaport Wireless wifi hotspot will be directed to the Seaport home page from where they will be able to log into Seaport Wireless. No password is required.
We are pleased to announce the full agenda for our 2016 US Conference. If you’d like to attend, please register now! The one-day event for members and invited guests only has been planned around three panel discussions on current hot topics in life sciences R&D, and will include the live judging and audience choice voting for the President’s Startup Challenge 2016.
Event sponsors:
Here is the planned agenda for Tuesday 18th October – open to members and invited guests only:
- 8.30am: Registration and breakfast (in Seaport Ballroom)
- 9.00am: Welcome and introduction
- 9.05am: Keynote – Sohini Chowdhury, Senior Vice President, Research Partnerships, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research
- 9.35am: Panel: Internet of Things (IoT)
- Chair: David Caouette, Senior Director, Strategy and Operations Lead, BlueSky and Quantitative Medicine, Pfizer
- Panelists:
- Brian Duffy, Director, NIBR IT, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research
- Ken Johnson, Senior Director, Product Management, JBoss Middleware Business Unit, RedHat
- Gene Tetreault, Sr. Director of Products and Marketing, Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA
- 10.50am: Coffee
- 11.15am: Pistoia Alliance Current Portfolio Update
- 11.45am: Panel: Future of IP Capture
- Chair: Michael H. Elliott, CEO, Atrium Research & Consulting LLC
- Panelists:
- Joshua Bishop, Associate Director Business/Technology Analysis CPH IT Informatics, Merck & Co.
- Dana Vanderwall, Director, Biology & Preclinical IT, Bristol-Myers Squibb
- Margaret DiFilippo, VP Sales North America, Dotmatics
- 1.00pm: Lunch
- 2.00pm: Panel: Deep Learning
- Chair: John Keilty,General Manager, Platform Operations, Third Rock Ventures
- Panelists:
- David Tabacco, Associate Director Business Consulting, Applied Technology, Merck & Co.
- Alexander Ivliev, Bioinformatics Scientist, Clarivate Analytics, formerly the IP&S business of Thomson Reuters
- Tim Moran, Director Life Science Research PM, Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA
- 3.15pm: Coffee
- 3.45pm: Pistoia Alliance Future Portfolio Update
- 4.15pm: President’s Startup Challenge 2016
- Pitches, Live Judging, and Audience Voting
- 5.15pm: Closing notes
- 5.30pm-7.30pm: Reception (in Flagship Ballroom)
- President’s Startup Challenge 2016 results and awards
If you haven’t already registered for our US conference then please register now!
Please note that the conference is open only to Pistoia Alliance Core and Participating members, the Pistoia Alliance leadership, and invited special guests.
Case Studies
A selection of case studies from the conference app are reproduced here for your reference.
Extra information for Pistoia Alliance board members only
- Board Dinner: Tuesday 18th October, 8pm, at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, 250 Northern Ave, Boston MA 02210. Five minutes walk East along Seaport Blvd from the Seaport Hotel, on the waterfront just past Fish Pier. Table reserved under the name of Richard Holland.
- Board Meeting: Wednesday 19th October, 9am-12.30pm at Elsevier Cell Press Boardroom, 50 Hampshire St, Cambridge MA 02139. Closest T is Kendall/MIT on the red line which is a ten minute walk. Lunch provided 12.30-1.30pm.
Pistoia Alliance Adds Key Resources to Support New Strategy Implementation
Wilmington, DE – The Pistoia Alliance, an organization dedicated to improving global life sciences R&D, has engaged additional resources as it expands its capabilities to support the implementation of its new strategy.
Previse Consulting will support the Pistoia Alliance’s various activities in assisting start-up companies, this includes the President’s Start-Up Challenge and the Mini Start-Up Challenge. Kalleid Inc. will be assisting with business development activities in the US, a key market for the Pistoia Alliance as it looks to increase its relevance and expand its activities.
Previse’s David Proudlock was most recently at GSK where he held a number of roles including Director, Innovation and Disruptive Technologies, along with a series of roles in IT and cheminformatics. Kalleid’s Mary Beth Walsh previously worked for BioDuro and Vertex Pharmaceuticals where she held senior business development roles.
Steve Arlington, President of the Pistoia Alliance, said: “The engagement of Previse and Kalleid are extremely important for the evolving Pistoia Alliance strategy. The US is an important market and through Mary Beth we can expand our presence there. Alongside this, David will be responsible for managing the start up competitions, an established and growing part of the Pistoia Alliance’s new approach to supporting innovation in life sciences”.
Innovation in Action, May 2016
The May 2016 edition of the Pistoia Alliance newsletter, Innovation in Action, is available to download as a PDF document.