Meetings explore medical futures

21 August 2010

As the drug development industry looks for alternative ways to find new medicines, ‘open source’ partnerships between academics and pharmaceutical companies are increasingly common. But challenges remain.

These were explored in a two-day Frontiers meeting hosted at the Trust and attended by representatives from both public and private sectors. The conclusions include the development of a cross-sector working group for the identification and validation of drug targets, and agreement on the need for common repositories for drug targets, failed drugs and key compounds. A separate workshop at the Trust looked at hospital-associated infections, such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile, and the patient pathway. Some 40 delegates, including scientists, healthcare workers, industry representatives, policy makers and patients, highlighted the many facets of the problem, such as detection and surveillance, hospital design and disease transmission. Among the conclusions were the need for standard operating procedures, new diagnostics and a national surveillance database.

Image: Empty hospital bed. Credit: Wellcome Library