Society needs a constant supply of new more effective medicines with decreased side effects. The current process of medicine development is cumbersome, lengthy, and often inefficient as only 1 in approximately 10,000 drug molecules will make it to the market. Studies demonstrated that the irreproducibility of preclinical research ranges from 51% to 89%, translating into over €25 billion wasted annually. Improvements could be achieved by advanced training programs to reinforce best practices related to core skills, technologies, and methods.
Thus, the vision of the ORBIS network is to form a multidisciplinary transnational team that will establish improved competencies and characterization approaches for pharmaceutical research evaluating drug substances and dosage forms.
The participants exchange skills and knowledge, which allow them to progress towards key advances in pharmaceutical sciences. They strengthen collaborative research between the different countries and sectors. The practical and economy-driven approach by industry is combined with scientific excellence to benefit European society with the implementation of scientific methods to solve practical problems and to inspire scientists to expand knowledge in line with industrial needs.
A gap analysis has been performed and technological solutions are proposed by the team to improve the processes of drug synthesis, preformulation, dosage form design, and biopharmaceutical properties. This supports Europe’s aspiration to become a global leader in providing innovative, efficient, safe, patient-friendly, and affordable medicinal products. To achieve this, we planned collaborative, complementary, and industrial application-driven research, leading to a substantial and sustainable improvement of the medicine development process. The educational mission of the project is to enhance the skills and expertise of staff involved in academic and industrial pharmaceutical R&D activities, especially early-stage researchers. The project is increasing their employability and the overall competence of the sector.
Knowledge exchange underpins the following major activities: research & commercialisation, teaching & learning as well as knowledge dissemination to the wider community. Due to the diversity of the group and multiplicity of geographic locations, a number of tools and approaches is used for knowledge sharing within the team. Summer Schools are executed on an annual basis (four in total) for all participants and responsibility for organising the events is circulated. Annual workshops as smaller events support collaboration within the project.
