News
Following the European artificial intelligence act, EMA and HMA have proposed a workplan from 2024 to 2028 to balance the risk-benefits of AI in drug development. The workplan addresses 4 critical AI dimensions: policies, tools, training and experiments. As part of pharmaceutical data intelligence, AI is rapidly and profoundly moving into each field of medicines discovery and development.
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We are very proud to announce that Anton De Spiegeleer won the Faculty PhD Thesis Prize 2021-2022 for Clinical and Translational Science. His work and presentation about the mechanisms of sarcopenia was highly appreciated by the jury. Also big congratulations to the PhD-promotors prof. Nele Van Den Noortgate, dr. Evelien Wynendaele and prof. Dirk Elewaut!
Animal testing in drug development is no longer an absolute requirement in US: are we ready to replace (completely) animal testing by pharmaceutical data-intelligence and in-vitro systems? (Ref.)
In our recent publication green chemistry principles were applied to the preparation of an analytical reagent. The functionality and cost-efficiency were included to evaluate sustainability. A Derringer desirability function was used to obtain a sustainability score. Replacing acetonitrile by ethanol resulted in the most sustainable reagent. Other factors were of less influence on the total desirability or sustainability.
Click here to read the article for free during the first 50 days after publication!
As a consequence of the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017, a draft guidance about competitive generic therapy (CGT) is published with the aim to incentivize generic competition in USA. The designation of medicine as CGT, the request for designation, the expedited review and the 180 days exclusivity period are explained in this draft guideline (rev.1). Although improvements and clarifications can certainly be made to the current version, it certainly makes medicines more affordable as part of their overall sustainability.
On Monday, September 19th, the very first group of S-DISCO students started their journey of learning and sharing knowledge with the summer school at GhentUniversity. The summer school is packed with introductory sessions to prepare them for the official start of lectures. Throughout the week, the students had the opportunity to get to know the university, the lecturers from the different consortium partners, and most importantly their fellow students! We are off to a great start and wish everyone involved a productive and enjoyable master’s program.
More info on the S-DISCO website.
EMA and the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) have recently issued a joint statement confirming that biosimilar medicines approved in the European Union (EU) are interchangeable with their reference medicine or with an equivalent biosimilar.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/biosimilar-medicines-can-be-interchanged
The annual JCR release by Clarivate analytics enables the research community to evaluate the world’s high-quality academic journals using a range of indicators, descriptive data and visualizations. This year’s JCR release is based on 2021 data compiled from the Web of Science Core Collection™.
The latest Journal Impact Factor of Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis (JPA) is 14.026, and DruQuaR (UGent) is proud of being part of it from the beginning with prof. Bart De Spiegeleer as one of the associate editors.
On 28 June 2022, the 3rd bachelor students in Pharmaceutical Sciences presented the results of their bachelor thesis to an interdisciplinary jury. Through a poster presentation, the students had to opportunity to display and discuss their experiments performed in the different research labs of the faculty. Photo's can be viewed here.
Ghent University (Belgium), the Medical University of Gdansk (Poland), the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and the University of Lille (France) jointly announce the new Erasmus+ Mundus Joint Master Degree Programme in Sustainable Drug Discovery (acronym: S-DISCO). This EU partnership of the four universities was selected under Erasmus+ to provide funding for talented students attending the course.
This programme originates from longstanding informal discussions between some of the partners on the need to train students in drug discovery, the challenging phase in the life cycle of a medicine that precedes first-in-human studies and clinical development. The programme is unique in that it will pay notable attention to sustainability, an aspect that currently receives little attention in traditional educational programmes in this area. Sustainability boundaries, including environmental, ecological and socio-economic dimensions, add an extra level of complexity to drug discovery, but are of increasing importance to competent authorities and the society at large.
Prof. Bart De Spiegeleer, prof. Serge Van Calenbergh and Dr. Evelien Wynendaele, from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences (with prof. Jan Van Bocxlaer as the dean), are the coordinators of this new international S-DISCO programme. It is a two-year Master programme consisting of logically aligned modules with stepwise build-up knowledge, skills and competences. By applying case-based learning, it will stimulate students to integrate, connect, confront and reconcile multi-perspective ways of looking at sustainable drug discovery.
After a preparative summer school in Ghent, all students will stay the first semester at this institution and the second semester in Gdansk. In the third semester, students may customize their studies in Lille or Groningen. In the fourth semester, students will perform a master thesis in one of these partner institutions or with one of the numerous associated partners (incl. industry, competent authorities and research institutions). Successful students will obtain a common master-degree of the 4 universities.
Scholarships from the EU will be available for on average 21 students every year, with both European and International students being invited to apply for the programme and associated grants. The grant covers the tuition fee, and also provides a travel and living allowance. Call for applications will be opened begin January 2022! The deadline for applications will be 28th February 2022. More information will soon appear on the course website.
Website of the International Master in Sustainable Drug Discovery
