Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PICARD (Disruptive GPCR Lead Discovery Platform Delivering New and Safer Therapeutics)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2018-08-01 al 2018-11-30
Drug development can take as long as 15 years before reaching the market, costing around €2 billion, due to the low success rate of molecules during clinical trials (5%). The pharma industry is now under pressure to develop new drugs, since many patents are expiring and generics are entering the market in large numbers. Patients and pharma companies are also concerned with the ethical implications related to animal testing. With PICARD we will introduce our computational aided lead drug discovery platform to the market: this will reduce development costs by €86 million and time-to-market by 10 years. In Phase 1, we evaluated our resources, estimated the financial impact on our company and established the requirements to reach commercialization status. We conclude that the PICARD project is not only feasible, but highly profitable.
1. We have carried out the optimization of the signaling assays of the PIC-Say element of our platform. We have established the next improvements to be implemented in the platform: Artificial Intelligence and expansion to new GPCR targets. We have assessed the risks linked to these implementations.
2. Our commercial feasibility has been established by the large market opportunity, the strong network of collaborators, customers, and institutions, a specific IPR strategy and a commercialization plan designed to lower entry-to-market barriers. We have asserted our Freedom to Operate.
3. Our financial evaluation shows that PICARD will be highly profitable, providing a large ROI, which guarantees the financial viability of the investment. We have also evaluated other sources of funding.
2. Our commercial feasibility has been established by the large market opportunity, the strong network of collaborators, customers, and institutions, a specific IPR strategy and a commercialization plan designed to lower entry-to-market barriers. We have asserted our Freedom to Operate.
3. Our financial evaluation shows that PICARD will be highly profitable, providing a large ROI, which guarantees the financial viability of the investment. We have also evaluated other sources of funding.
PICARD is a lead compound discovery platform that allows selecting molecules with high probability to make it all the way to the market. Other solutions in the market offer signaling assays and/or virtual screening. PICARD is the only platform combining these two elements with a systems biology approach, allowing us to go beyond the state of the art in efficient drug discovery and predictive potential in the design of lead compounds. It will allow producing safer drugs at a high rate and lower cost. Furthermore, it will highly contribute to animal welfare, which is of high concern for society at large, by reducing the need for animal testing significantly.