STRATAGEM has been awarded the COST Innovator Grant (CIG) 2022 for the proposal PANDORA

26/08/2022

Dear STRATAGEM members,

It is a pleasure to announce that our COST Action has been awarded with the COST Innovator Grant (CIG) 2022, for the proposal “PANDORA – Pan-European Educational Platform on Multidrug Resistant Tumours and Personalised Cancer Treatment”.

The project will start on 1 st November 2022 and will last 1 year. COST Association has assigned a budget of 125.000 EUROs.
The activities supported by the budget are training of Young Research Investigators (YRIs), Short Term Scientific Missions (STMS), interaction with stakeholders to produce a “business plan” as endpoint.

There will be no more management committee, but a CIG Team who is in charge of coordinating, organizing the initiatives and administrating the grant.

CIG Team has been formed by Action members who gave their availability on December 2021:

• Chiara Riganti (Chair)
• Javier De Las Rivas (Vice-Chair)
• Thomas Mohr, Alexander Tolios, Tatiana Chontorotzea, Tiziano Serra, Wolfgang Link, Cristina Fornaguera, Patrícia Rijo, Bilge Guvenc Tuna, Ana Bela Sarmento Ribeiro, Elizabeth Perez-Ruiz, Simona Saponara, Virginia Tzankova, Giacomo Drago, Catherine Passirani, M. Helena Vasconcelos, Jitka Vitkorova (CIG Team Members)
• Milica Pešić (Grant Awarding Coordinator)
• Yordan Yordanov (Science Communication Officer)
• Dale Lawson (Grant Holder Manager)

Which type of initiatives are planned?

1. 1 online course (12 non-consecutive sessions), covering the hot topics in MDR: Artificial
   intelligence, big-data and single-cell analysis; biological models, advanced imaging, OMICs
   techniques, computational and medicinal chemistry; molecular docking; IPR-related issues;
   clinical trial design and management; drug-regulation; ethical issues and shared-decision
   making applied to medicine. For this course, we are asking the certification as Erasmus BIP+
   program.
2.  3 training schools (on-site), on:
   – advances in 3D models,
   – rational drug discovery and toxicology based on computational modelling, in silico tools and medicinal chemistry
   – advances in nanoformulations to carry drugs, antibodies and vaccines against MDR tumors
3. 1 online workshop on clinical trials design and management in oncology
4. 1 online workshop on shared decision making in health policy and drug regulation
5. 1 online workshop where YRIs can present to CEOs/Co-founders of biotech and pharma companies their ideas and business plan of start-up
6. STSMs

Who are the trainers?

CIG Team Members, in collaboration with: every STRATAGEM members willing to provide their expertise plus companies researchers

Who are the trainees?

For online initiatives: everyone can participate without any charge, also members who were not affiliated to STRATAGEM.
For training schools and STSMs: priority will be given to STRATAGEM’s affiliated members

How trainees-trainers-researchers interact?

In each initiative (online workshop and training schools), besides the training sessions, there will be networking sessions where researchers from academia can present their “patentable” inventions to representant of private companies. They can discuss the IPR related issues and start to take agreement with interested industrial partners, to favor the commercialization of the inventions.

Our final goals after 1 year are:

• Obtain a recognition as Erasmus BIP+ program for our program focused on MDR
• Establish a virtuous mechanism where academic researchers sell their inventions to companies, ask that a percentage of the royalties (5-10% or more depending on the cases) are given back to inventors, use 50% of the royalties to continue their own research and 50% of the royalties to sustain the initiatives from year 2 (through a no-profit foundation).
• Plan similar initiatives in year 2 and following years (partially funded by the royalties, partially covered by registration fees)
  As University of Torino and Grant Holder Administrators, we are taking the steps necessary to obtain an Erasmus recognition and create he no-profit foundation to sustain the platform from the second year.

What we ask from you?

• To stay tuned on the initiatives that will be advertise on STRATAGEM website
• To disseminate the initiatives within your institutions and network: online initiatives are open and have no limit of participants
• To be pro-active in inviting R&D specialists, CEOs, co-founders of biotech and pharma companies, SMEs, etc to our initiatives: greater is their participation, greater is the possibility of patents and cashback to continue our research.

From September/October the detailed Work and Budget Plan will be discussed and released, so details on the first initiatives will be provided.

I wish you an enjoyable summer break,

Professor Chiara Riganti

Chair of PANDORA CIG17104