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Partnerships Meetup 2016

Meeting report

Plenary session

In the Lygature Partnerships MeetUp plenary session, four invited speakers shared their views on the need for public-private partnerships in the quest to find solutions for societal challenges in the area of life-science and health. They highlighted the role of their organizations in these partnerships and specified requirements to take those partnerships to the next level.

Paul Korte, Managing Director of Janssen in the Netherlands and Chair of the Dutch Association for Innovative Medicines (formerly known as Nefarma), argued that the issues surrounding development of modern medicines cannot be solved by any single organization, but instead need to involve a complex network of actors. Where previously it was about bridging academia and industry, other actors such as patient organizations, payers, regulators and many more are now essential players.

Making the connection between medical technology and precision medicine, Hans Hofstraat, Vice-President Philips Research, continued by presenting the results of several successful partnerships in which Philips is active, including a nice example in the area of oncology involving the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

The role of health foundations, or to be more precise, the changing role of health foundations in partnerships, was nicely and openly illustrated by Marina Senten, Director Research & Healthcare at the Dutch Heart Foundation and Board Member of the Dutch Collaborating Health Foundations (SGF). Health foundations are moving away from simply subsidizing projects. They are becoming active partners in research consortia to steer them towards results that benefit patients, thereby demonstrating to donors that their money is being spent wisely.

Professor Frank Miedema, Dean & Vice President of the Executive Board of the University Medical Center Utrecht, used the inspiring example of Health-RI to illustrate the need for more collaboration. The development of this unique nation-wide research infrastructure for personalized medicine and health is an excellent example of the power of partnerships: a next step in sharing data, medical images, biobanks and other resources to facilitate research and development.

In between these four plenary talks, Lygature’s Rita Azevedo, Remco de Vrueh and Tale Sliedrecht informed the audience about the results of the three parallel sessions that took place during the morning program.

Parallel sessions

Rita Azevedo - Parallel Session 1

Hands-on workshop: data management tools for translational research

Together with TraIT, BBMRI-NL and DTL

During this workshop, participants gained hands-on experience of biomedical translational data management, data sharing and associated infrastructures.

BBMRI-NL, DTL and TraIT co-organized five busy and lively mini-workshops with the collaboration of experts from some of their public and private partners, notably Erasmus University Medical Center (Erasmus MC), Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), The Hyve and University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG).

The aim was to give a flavour of what is already possible in the Netherlands in end-to-end biomedical translational data management via the following short hands-on sessions:

Clinical data (OpenClinica) by Marinel Cavelaars, Jolanda Strubel and Jacob Rousseau
Biomedical imaging (XNAT) by Marcel Koek and Adriaan Versteeg
Biobanking (Molgenis Catalogue) by David van Enckevort
Making data FAIR - or FAIRify! - FAIR DataPoint by Rajaram Kaliyaperumal and Luiz Olavo Bonino, and myFAIR Analysis by Andrew Stubbs
Data integration (tranSMART) by Mariska Bierkens and Jochem Bijlard

Although short, the workshops led to very fruitful discussions between participants and the experts, including how to make use of the tools and the network of experts for their own studies and data.

All the above workshops will be available online for participants until November 25, but anyone interested in them can always contact Lygature for follow-up. Alternatively, you can come to the Health-RI conference in Amersfoort on December 1^st, where many of the above experts will be present. In 2017, more in-depth follow-up training sessions will be organized.

Remco de Vrueh - Parallel Session 2

London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases – Quo vadis?

Together with representatives from the Pediatric Praziquantel Consortium, PDE4NPD, and MMV-PDP

During this session, chaired by Cees de Joncheere (formerly with WHO), different perspectives were provided by Wieneke Vullings (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Ed Zijlstra (Erasmus MC/DNDi), Maria Yazdanbakhsh (LUMC) and Jutta Reinhard-Rupp (Merck KGaA).

Overall, what became clear is that the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) community should continue to raise awareness on its needs, maintain existing public-private partnerships and initiate new ones. It also became clear that although current drug donation programs suffice, they are not considered sustainable in the long run. Future advances in R&D should therefore go hand-in-hand with the development of novel models that ensure sustained accessibility to a new generation of affordable and effective therapies.

Tale Sliedrecht - Parallel Session 3

Sharing resources: It’s time to partner up!

Together with the European Lead Factory and the Parelsnoer Institute

Within the Lygature portfolio there are several projects in which partners from both the public and private sector not only work together but actually go one step further by sharing resources. These collaborations yield results that surpass what individual partners could achieve on their own. In the parallel session ‘Sharing resources´, speakers were invited who either already share resources or who have a vision to collaborate and share in the future.

Biobanking professor Hein Verspaget from LUMC presented the achievements and vision of the Parelsnoer Institute, which has become a standard for biobanking. The Parelsnoer Institute enables the Dutch University Medical Centers to combine and share clinical data, medical images and biomaterials to answer scientific questions.

Personalized healthcare professor Alain van Gool highlighted the importance of high quality biomarkers. He shared his vision of collaborations within the biomarker research area, including collaborations with the developers of new technologies, and the importance of equipping researchers and clinicians with a broad range of new diagnostic tools.

The session was concluded by Hans van Eenennaam, Chief Operational Officer at Aduro Biotech Europe, who envisioned an open innovation model in which academics, SMEs and pharma companies collaborate to share infrastructure and knowledge in order to create novel therapeutic antibodies.

The Lygature Partnerships MeetUp day concluded with the opening of the new ‘Jaarbeurs Innovation Mile’ innovation hub, in which Lygature has established its new office.

Program

09:30 Walk-in and coffee
10:00 Welcome
10:15 Parallel sessions

Hands-on workshop: data management tools for translational research
Together with TraIT, BBMRI-NL and DTL

Click here for the manuals and presentations related to the workshop session

Biomedical researchers in 2016 are also data stewards, responsible for data collection,
analysis, and reusability. Such responsibility and accountability for data is often summarized in the acronym FAIR data: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

To help translational researchers with their data stewardship task, collaborating research infrastructures in The Netherlands have been implementing and maintaining a broad set of solutions.

This workshop offers a unique opportunity to see these solutions in an informal setting. There are no lengthy classroom lectures. Instead, you will acquire hands-on experience across a broad set of solutions, from Clinical to Imaging to Genomics – including strategies for data integration. Not only will you be able to follow generic tutorials, but you will have the opportunity to process your own data and tackle your own data issues. The sessions will be led by experts in the field.

Workshops
- OpenClinica (Clinical Data, eCRF)
  Facilitators: Marinel Cavelaars (The Hyve/TraIT) / Jacob Rousseau (NKI/TraIT) / Jolanda Strubel (The Hyve, TraIT)
- XNAT (Imaging, DICOM)
  Facilitator: Marcel Koek (Erasmus MC/BBMRI-NL) / Adriaan Versteeg (Erasmus MC/BBMRI-NL/TraIT)
- Molgenis Biosample Catalogue
  Facilitator: David van Enckevort (UMCG/BBMRI-NL)
- How to make your data FAIR
  Facilitators: Luiz Olavo Bonino (DTL), Rajaram Kaliyaperumal (LUMC), Andrew Stubbs (ErasmusMC)
- tranSMART data Integration
  Facilitators: Mariska Bierkens (NKI/TraIT) / Jochem Bijlard (The Hyve/TraIT)
Participants will have the opportunity to follow all of the workshops

About the organizers
This workshop session is organized by Rita Azevedo & Jan-Willem Boiten (Lygature) on behalf of a number of research infrastructures collaborating within the new national research infrastructure for personalized medicine & health (Health-RI):
- TraIT – Translational research IT
- BBMRI-NL – The national facility for the collection, management and sharing of biosamples, images and data
- DTL – The Dutch Techcentre for the Lifesciences
London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases – Quo vadis?
Together with representatives from the Pediatric Praziquantel Consortium, PDE4NPD, and MMV-PDP

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are a group of infectious diseases affecting an estimated 1.4 billion people worldwide. Their combined disease burden makes a huge economic, social, and health impact, especially in low-income countries in developing regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin-America. Since 2012, many product development partnerships (PDPs), funders, academic institutes, NGOs, pharmaceutical companies, and governments have joined forces under the umbrella of the London Declaration on NTDs and the WHO NTD Roadmap. The goal is to support, initiate, and implement a multitude of NTD programs, from research through to development and access.

Funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, EDCTP, the Dutch PDP Fund, and the GHIT Fund are providing the necessary support to allow promising new health solutions for NTDs. Pharmaceutical companies and PDPs have a number of potential diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines in the pipeline. The global infectious disease communities, including the Dutch, are providing necessary pathophysiological, epidemiological, and clinical knowledge around NTDs. It is clear that great progress has been made. But the question lingers: have we together generated sufficient momentum, knowledge, and resources to overcome the global impact of NTDs in the next decade?

During this parallel session, different (inter)national experts from academia, industry, the government, and NGOs will share their experiences and views on how the field of Neglected Tropical Diseases R&D has progressed since 2012. They will provide a glimpse of what is still required to move forward. After the presentations, the audience will have ample opportunity to share and discuss with the experts their experiences, needs, and outlook for the future.

Speakers
- Cees de Joncheere (Chair), former Director of the Essential Medicines and Health Products Department, WHO
- Jutta Reinhard-Rupp, Head of Translational Innovation Platform Global Health, Merck
- Wieneke Vullings, ‎Deputy Head, Health and Aids division Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Maria Yazdanbakhsh, Professor of Cellular Immunology of Parasitic Infections, Leiden University Medical Center
- Ed Zijlstra, Head of Mycetoma programme, DNDi
Sharing resources: It’s time to partner up!
ogether with the European Lead Factory and the Parelsnoer Institute

Partnerships appear to offer a magic formula for biomedical innovation – which is unsurprising in light of the complex and lengthy process involved in developing new medical solutions. A number of successful partnerships have moved beyond sharing knowledge and ideas, and have started to share proprietary resources as well. For example, the European Lead Factory aims to finding new drug candidates by sharing compound libraries. The principle is simple: finding a needle in a haystack is easier if you increase the number of needles. An essential component of such a partnership’s success is a balanced contract that generates win-win outcomes for all parties involved.

Partnerships clearly work, so it’s time to partner up and ‘Pioneer medicine. Together.’ In this parallel session, experts on biobanks, biomarkers, and biologics will first give short lectures on how to take shared resources to the next level. Participants will then have the opportunity to engage in a brainstorm session, exploring the wider potential of sharing resources within the Dutch biomedical research sector.

Confirmed speakers
- Hein Verspaget, Professor Biobanking, Leiden University Medical Center
- ‎Alain van Gool, Professor of Personalized Healthcare, Radboudumc
- Hans van Eenennaam, Chief Operational Officer, Aduro Biotech Europe

12:15 Lunch
13:30 Plenary session

Pioneering medicine together: taking partnership to the next level
Lygature together with Health~Holland, Samenwerkende Gezondheidsfondsen, Vereniging Innovatieve Geneesmiddelen Nederland (Nefarma)

Innovation in health research depends increasingly on cooperative ventures between public organizations, authorities and private enterprises, in public-private partnerships (PPPs). The Dutch Life Sciences and Health sector is a frontrunner in this field. It includes a wide variety of PPPs that are collaborating closely and working together towards a national infrastructure for personalized medicine and health. The Netherlands is also well-represented in many international partnerships, where academic groups, SMEs and NGOs with Dutch roots play important roles.

Major benefits arise when taking such partnerships to the next level. During the plenary session, our expert panel will elaborate upon the future of partnerships and consider some key questions: how can we strengthen collaboration between pharma and medtech industry, academia and charities? What do we expect from each other, and how do we organize this? How can we increase the cohesion in the sector even further?

The plenary session will be valuable to a broad cross section of health professionals. Join the discussion on 15 November.

Speakers
- Paul Korte, Janssen, the Netherlands & Chairman Dutch Association Innovative Medicines
- Hans Hofstraat, Vice President Philips Research
- Marina Senten, Director Research & Healthcare, Dutch Heart Foundation & Board member Collaborating Health Foundations
- Frank Miedema, Dean & vice-president of the Executive Board, University Medical Center Utrecht

15:30 Wrap-up
16:00 Opening of the Jaarbeurs Innovation Mile and networking drinks reception

The Partnerships MeetUp will close with a celebration and opening of the Jaarbeurs Innovation Mile (JIM). Mayor of Utrecht Jan van Zanen and David Pappie (Director TopSectors and Industry Policy at the Ministry of Economic Affairs) will launch this new co-working hotspot next to Utrecht Central Station, together with the first tenants.