Get to know more about one of the latest in silico medicine projects funded by the European Commission
REPO-TRIAL, a 5-year H2020 project funded by a EUR 5.6 million research grant from the European Commission, is gearing up for a huge push towards accelerated rational drug repurposing by using a consistent systems medicine approach combined with advanced in silico discovery technologies. The project commenced on February 1, and is scheduled to conclude on January 31, 2023.
Systems medicine creates an entirely new perspective for pharmaceutical innovation by conceiving the human body not as a modular collection of organs that require separate treatment, but rather as a highly connected network of molecular regulatory pathways. Drug repurposing, a strategy that is enjoying increasing popularity because it provides a quicker and cheaper route to new treatment opportunities, attempts to re-develop known active pharmaceutical ingredients for therapeutic applications that are fundamentally different from the originally envisaged ones.
“The approach that we are testing in REPO-TRIAL has the potential to disrupt medicine and drug development as we know it,” stated REPO-TRIAL project coordinator Professor Harald Schmidt, chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Personalised Medicine at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. “It will allow us to identify opportunities for approved drugs, and also low-dose combinations of such drugs, and to rapidly advance to pilot clinical trials, with minimal requirements for animal experiments. While our focus will be on neurology and cardiology, especially stroke and heart failure, REPO-TRIAL will also look at other areas of high unmet medical need.”
In addition to its ambitious scientific and development goals, REPO-TRIAL is a shining example of collaboration between academia and industry in Europe. Participants include pharmacology and immunology departments from the universities at Maastricht and Utrecht (The Netherlands), the university clinics at Essen and Hannover (Germany), and the bioinformatics departments at Newcastle University (United Kingdom) and the Technical University at Munich (Germany); while industry participants (SomaLogic, United Kingdom), Biocrates (Austria), and H.M. Pharma Consultancy (Austria) will provide invaluable expertise in the fields of biomarkers, patenting, and public dissemination of results.
If you're interested to know more about the REPO-TRIAL visit the project website
