The 14th FRAME Annual Lecture

Speaker at the 14th FRAME Annual Lecture was Professor Michel Goldman, Executive Director of the Brussels-based Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI).

In his talk Professor Goldman explained how the IMI is helping to overcome many of the hurdles in drug research and development by forging public-private partnerships to share expertise and information.

By encouraging non-competitive collaborations between consortia of pharmaceutical companies, academia and medical practiioners the IMI has supported significant developments in potential treatments for a number of diseases and conditions; such as autism, cancer, diabetes, and antibiotic resistance.

He said the IMI fosters new mindsets that can bring about improvements for everyone involved, and by facilitating patient involvement in drug development it is possible to gather more, and more useful, information from data than can be gained by numbers of disparate research projects.

IMI projects are also helping to reduce and replace animal tests because bodies are working together to look for new and reliable in vitro and in silico methods for pharmaceutical and toxicology testing.

Professor Goldman will expand on his talk in a future edition of FRAME's scientific journal ATLA (Alternatives to Laboratory Animals).

The FRAME Annual Lecture was founded in 1999, and the inaugural address was given by Bill Russell, one of the authors of the work that introduced the principle of the Three Rs to research.

Since then,speakers have been gathered from leading institutions and organisations who are concerned with the implementation of Replacement, Reduction and Refinement.

The invitation-only event is followed by a buffet supper.
This year it took place on November 14.

Archived December 4 2012