Pharma R&D Today

Predicting Cancer Drug Combinations That Work

Posted on August 6th, 2020 by Xuanyan Xu

Dr. Bart Westerman is a Group Leader and Assistant Professor at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam. There he heads research projects in neuro-oncology, as well as in the use of bioinformatics to tackle complex, multidimensional questions to transform cancer therapy decision-making and management. He and his colleagues recently published a cancer drug atlas that predicts synergistic combination therapies for cancer.

Research Data Alliance Releases Guidelines for COVID-19 Data Sharing

Posted on July 24th, 2020 by Xuanyan Xu

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) has released its final version of the RDA COVID-19 Recommendations and Guidelines on data sharing for COVID-19, which covers four main research areas: clinical data, omics practices, epidemiology and social sciences. The document also touches on issues like community participation, legal and ethical considerations, research software and indigenous data.

To Be a Digital Pharma Player, You Need Data – Reusable Data

Posted on July 21st, 2020 by Ani Marrs

A new paper published in Drug Discovery Today finds that the pharmaceutical industry is in an “early mature” phase of using artificial intelligence in R&D, which means that major industry players are interested in and pursuing AI, but not as actively as one might expect. For instance, they note that of the top 20 pharma companies that they looked at, only two (Novartis and Johnson & Johnson) have commercialized AI through products and services so far.

The Dawn of a European Health Data Space – Challenges

Posted on July 16th, 2020 by Mark Siebert

The European data strategy aims to construct common data spaces for all, create a single EU market for data, and catalyze a dynamic data economy. In a previous post, we briefly described the essence of the envisioned heath data space and pointed at opportunities and possible starting points to transform this vision into reality.

Treating Pharma Data as an Asset: moving from an application centric to an information-centric organization – presented by Dr. Martin Romacker, Roche

Posted on July 14th, 2020 by Ani Marrs

Pharma knows there is a need for clean, reusable, FAIR data to fuel effective machine learning-driven R&D – but driving effective information and knowledge management is a long process, needing a step change where individuals learn their roles in data stewardship and reduce them to practice in a way that doesn’t constrain or impede their research activities.

The Dawn of a European Health Data Space – Opportunities

Posted on July 9th, 2020 by Mark Siebert

At the beginning of 2020, the European Commission introduced a “European strategy for data.” The document proposes to bolster and advance the data economy in Europe with a view towards capturing “the benefits of better use of data, including greater productivity and competitive markets, but also improvements in health and well-being, environment, transparent governance and convenient public services.”

About this Blog

The Elsevier Pharma R&D blog provides insight and opinion on topics related to pharmaceutical research and development, namely: big data, target identification, new drug discovery, drug safety monitoring, risk mitigation and regulatory compliance. We serve the community of chemists, scientists, drug safety specialists, educators and students interested in pharmaceutical R&D.

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Elsevier,  its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Reed Elsevier.