Repurposing TIN Seminar: Addressing hurdles from the research community

This Repurposing TIN webinar series will address some of the challenges in the Drug Repurposing space described in the seminars held during 2020. The focus of these new webinars will be on technological and commercial/regulatory aspects worth exploring to support the UCL community and will count on the invaluable contribution of external partners from industry, not-for-profit organisations, charities and patient groups.

The second seminar of the series will focus on how to tackle the challenges encountered by academics when moving a project through to expensive clinical trials due to the lack of consideration early on to the commercial proposition.

Drug repurposing has the potential to deliver therapies faster and offers opportunities to address high unmet medical needs, especially in areas where funding is limited such as in the case of rare diseases. However, there are also significant challenges in widespread uptake of such strategies.

During this webinar Healx, an AI-powered and patient-inspired technology company, and Cures Within Reach, a philanthropic leader in drug, device and nutraceutical repurposing research, will discuss the regulatory and commercial challenges associated with the redevelopment of existing drugs and some potential strategies to navigate these hurdles, opportunities in this research space, funding approaches and their impact. Success stories and case studies will also be presented.

Agenda:

• 14:00-14.05 Welcome and introduction of the TINs (Asha Recino, Coordinator of the Repurposing Therapeutic Innovation Network)
• 14:05-14.10 Opening Remarks (Oscar Della Pasqua, Chair of the Repurposing Therapeutic Innovation Network)
• 14:10-14:40 Redeveloping medicines: commercial and regulatory considerations (Clara Tang, Richard Huckle - Healx)
• 14:40-15:10 Repurposing Research Opportunities for Patient-Focused Research (Clare Thibodeaux - Cures Within Reach)
• 15:10-15:30 Questions from the audience and panel discussion

Register for the next events in this series:

How partnership drives innovation

• Wednesday 6th October, 2.30-4.30pm

Innovative approaches to accelerate drug repurposing

• Thursday 18th November, 2.30-4.40pm

Who Should Attend?

Basic and translational researchers at all career stages and currently involved/or planning to work in the Drug Repurposing space are encouraged to attend. The Repurposing TIN aims to reach out to researchers interested in what research questions to ask when repositioning drugs that are already on the market, and in getting the right type of support at the right time.

We'd also like to invite existing and potential industry partners to attend, as we provide insights into the work of the TINs to accelerate the translation of biomedical discoveries into viable therapeutics.