Optibrium Ltd.. (10/10/17). "Press Release: Optibrium Joins EUR 40 Million eTRANSAFE Project". Cambridge.

	Region	EU (European Union)
	Organisation	eTRANSAFE project (IMI, EU, EFPIA)
	Group	Innovative Health Initiative (IHI JU)
	Product	drug discovery
	Product 2	drug development

Prestigious line-up of pharma, academia and SMEs aim to improve security in drug development process

Optibrium™, a developer of software for small molecule drug discovery, today announced that it will join the Enhancing Translational Safety Assessment through Integrative Knowledge Management (eTRANSAFE) project. eTRANSAFE is a five-year, 40 million EUR European collaboration between private and public organisations which seeks to improve safety assessment across the drug discovery and development process, ultimately with the aim of enabling the delivery of safer medicines.

Led by Novartis Pharma, with Bayer AG as deputy lead, the eTRANSAFE consortium partners 8 academic institutions, 6 SMEs and 12 pharma companies. It is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (IMI 2) together with the pharmaceutical industry and coordinated by the Fundació Institut Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM).

The eTRANSAFE project will carry out key efforts in the field of data standardisation and quality control, promoting the development and implementation of relevant data sharing policies and procedures that will have a great global impact in the community. eTRANSAFE will catalyse the transformation of drug safety modelling from monolithic applications and isolated data repositories to an open innovation ecosystem based on open standards, modular components and data integration services.

Dr Edmund Champness, Optibrium’s CSO, commented: “We are very proud to contribute to the eTRANSAFE project and this important effort to improve safety assessment in drug discovery. Optibrium look forward to leading the development of new visualisation approaches to understanding translational safety data, so that researchers can more effectively identify candidate drugs with better safety profiles. This will also support our own research into methods for the optimisation and selections of compounds, enabling researchers to efficiently focus their efforts on compounds with the best chance of success in becoming effective therapies.“

Project leader Francois Pognan from Novartis said: “The safety of new drug candidates in first clinical trials is extrapolated based on preclinical animal data. These extrapolations are made using solely the data generated for the project at hand, since a global and systematic analysis of predictivity of the entire collective historical data pool has never been made."

Deputy leader Thomas Steger-Hartmann from Bayer added: "It is often poorly known to what extent and frequency an observed effect in an animal species may translate into a human effect.”

Professor Ferran Sanz, coordinator of the project said: “eTRANSAFE will improve translational safety assessment and contribute to the key scientific policies, such as the reduce, reuse, recycle (3Rs) one and the FAIR principles for data sharing.”

For further information on Optibrium and StarDrop, please visit www.optibrium.com/stardrop/, contact info@optibrium.com or call +44 1223 815900.

For more information about eTRANSAFE project please visit: www.etransafe.eu/

The project is coordinated and led by:

Fundació Institut Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (Coordinator)
Novartis Pharma AG (Leader)
Synapse Research Management Partners SL (Co-coordinator)
Bayer AG (Deputy Leader)

ENDS

Media contact

Sarah Jeffery Zyme Communications E-mail: sarah.jeffery@zymecommunications.com Phone: +44 (0) 7771 730919

Optibrium

Nick Foster Head of Commercial Operations E-mail: nick.foster@optibrium.com Phone: +44 (0)1223 815900

About Optibrium Ltd.

Optibrium provides elegant software solutions for small molecule design, optimisation and data analysis. The company’s lead product, StarDrop, is a comprehensive suite of integrated software with a highly visual and user-friendly interface. StarDrop enables a seamless flow from the latest data through to predictive modelling and decision-making regarding the next round of synthesis and research, improving the speed, efficiency, and productivity of the discovery process.

Founded in 2009, Optibrium is headquartered in Cambridge, UK with offices in Boston, US. Optibrium continues to develop new products and research novel technologies to improve the efficiency and productivity of the drug discovery process. Optibrium works closely with its broad range of customers and collaborators that include leading global pharma, agrochemical and flavouring companies, biotech and academic groups.

For further information visit www.optibrium.com or join in discussions on improving the productivity of drug discovery at www.optibrium.com/community.

About eTransafe

The eTRANSAFE partners are:

1. Fundació Institut Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM)
2. Synapse Research Management Partners S.L.
3. Lhasa Limited
4. European Molecular Biology Laboratory (for ELIXIR)
5. Erasmus Universitair Medisch Centrum Rotterdam
6. Universiteit Leiden
7. Universität Wien
8. Simcyp Limited
9. Molecular Networks GmbH – Computerchemie
10. Optibrium Limited
11. Liverpool John Moores University
12. Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung e.V.
13. PDS Computer Software Limited
14. Universitat Pompeu Fabra
15. Novartis Pharma AG
16. Bayer AG
17. Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH
18. Hoffmann-La Roche AG
19. Merck KGaA
20. Janssen Pharmaceutica NV
21. Institute de Recherche Internationales Servier
22. AbbVie Inc
23. AstraZeneca AB
24. Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH
25. Clarivate Analytics
26. IPSEN Innovation SAS

eTRANSAFE is funded through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Europe’s largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. eTRANSAFE has received support from IMI2 Joint Undertaking under Grant Agreement No. 777365. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). IMI supports collaborative research projects and builds networks of industrial and academic experts in order to boost pharmaceutical innovation in Europe.

Record changed: 2023-06-05