Farmaindustria sets two biomedical research objectives for 2025: consolidate Spain’s leadership in clinical trials and boost translational research
The Coordination Committee of the Technological Platform for Innovative Medicines defines its action plan for 2025
Madrid will host the 18th Annual Conference of Biomedical Research Platforms on 13 May.
Farmaindustria.es
The Coordination Committee of the Spanish Technological Platform for Innovative Medicines (PTEMI) – a working team made up of 9 representatives from public research centres and 9 research managers from the pharmaceutical industry, which has been working since 2005 with the aim of promoting biomedical research through public-private collaboration – met this Wednesday to define the Platform’s roadmap and the strategic lines to be worked on in 2025.
In this way, two key objectives were set: on the one hand, to strengthen Spain’s leadership in clinical trials, with digitalisation as a major catalyst for this objective, and, on the other, to work on a national project to promote pre-clinical and translational research, where Spain has a long way to go.
As Farmaindustria’s deputy director general, Javier Urzay, recalled at the start of the meeting, ‘we are living in a moment of opportunity, but not without risk. The Pharmaceutical Industry Strategy approved by the Government last December is based on three pillars: access to innovation and sustainability, industrialisation and production and R&D. And it is precisely in this last pillar that we have no limits and the results can be extraordinary if we continue to work in collaboration with the government and the other agents involved in biomedical research,’ Urzay stressed.
Spain currently has a competitive advantage over other countries in underpinning its leadership in clinical trials, as it is the leader in Europe with 930 clinical studies authorised in 2024. Even so, there are challenges and areas for improvement in the development of new medicines. To address them, the Innovative Medicines Platform and Farmaindustria will work on streamlining and reducing clinical research management processes; bringing clinical trials closer to patients in primary care; promoting decentralised elements and networked clinical trials; using data and artificial intelligence; encouraging the measurement of results in real life; and greater patient participation in all biomedical R&D processes.
Regarding the development of preclinical and translational research, researcher Mabel Loza, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, reported on the progress made in defining a public-private preclinical research programme in Spain, with strong involvement of pharmaceutical companies and increasingly closer to fruition.
The PTEMI Coordination Committee meeting also shared two IHI consortia, whose goal is to translate biomedical research and health innovation into tangible benefits for patients and society, and to ensure that Europe remains at the forefront of interdisciplinary, sustainable and patient-centred health research. The first of these was presented by Ferrán Sanz, Professor of Biostatistics and Biomedical Informatics at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), and focuses on the use of digital tools to reduce the use of animals in research, while the second focuses on the inclusion of diversity criteria in clinical trials to ensure the participation of more patient groups and was presented by Estrella García, Global Director of Clinical Research at Almirall.
Finally, the date was also set for the XVIII Annual Conference of Biomedical Research Platforms, the great annual event for biomedical research in Spain, co-organised by Farmaindustria, Asebio, Nanomed, Fenin and Veterindustria. It will be held on 13 May in Madrid.
