Dr. Saman Honarnejad, Director of Drug Discovery at Pivot Park Screening Centre has been appointed as an external member of the Drug Repurposing Advisory Board at Oncode Institute.
Oncode is an independent institute where the best fundamental cancer researchers in the Netherlands come together to bring their research discoveries into the clinic faster. Along with performing vital basic research, Oncode is specialized in cooperating with third parties to guide its scientists’ discoveries towards translational and clinical research and novel diagnostics, drugs, and treatments.
Pivot Park Screening Centre (PPSC) is proud to announce contributing to this effort as an external member of the Drug Repurposing Advisory Board. “PPSC’s mission as an early drug discovery service provider is to accelerate the discovery of new medicines for a healthier society. The Drug Repurposing Program at the Oncode Institute not only allows rapid testing of novel therapeutic hypothesis, but also facilitates de-risked drug discovery with the goal of bringing new medicines to patients faster and as such, it fits very well with our mission as a company” says Dr. Saman Honarnejad, Director of Drug Discovery at PPSC and member of Drug Repurposing Advisory Board at Oncode Institute.
“Besides Early Drug Discovery-services for Pharma & Biotech, PPSC is also heavily involved in selection of crowd-sourced screening proposals across various target classes and disease areas in the European Lead Factory. Its know-how and extensive experience in tailored Assay Development and hit finding through ultra-High Throughput Screening adds a significant value to the Drug Repurposing Program at the Oncode Institute and we are happy to benefit from PPSC’s contributions” says Prof. Mario van der Stelt, Chair of Molecular Physiology at Leiden University and Drug Repurposing Advisory Board at Oncode Institute.
Development of new medicines is complex, time intensive, costly, and associated with a high degree of attrition. The 20 largest pharmaceutical companies combined spend about $60 billion each year on drug development, and the estimated average cost of marketing a single new drug including failed ones is $2.6 billion – a 140% increase over the past decade1. This sustainability crisis is a huge burden on the pharmaceutical and health care industry and patients with unmet medical needs.
Lack of safety and efficacy at different stages of drug development are the largest sources of high attrition rates. Nevertheless, repurposing marketed drugs that are in clinical use and drug candidates that were abandoned for given disease indications to tackle other diseases is an increasingly attractive approach with potentially lower development costs and timelines.
To support researchers in bringing novel therapeutic applications to the patient at affordable costs in shorter timelines, the Drug Repurposing Program at the Oncode Institute enables all Oncode researchers to have access to the next generation Drug Repurposing library, containing more than 6.000 drugs in various stages of clinical development including abandoned, off-patent and launched ones.
For more information about Oncode Institute, please visit https://www.oncode.nl/
