On January 16 and 17 2025, our PI Prof. Santiago Vázquez participated, along 80 world-renowned experts from public and private institutions, in the International Think Tank on Preclinical Drug Discovery with the aim of advancing disruptive science toward the development of transformational therapeutics.

The workshop was organised by Prof. Mabel Loza and Prof. Ángel Carracedo with their teams in the BioFarma research group/Innopharma platform at CIMUS and the Kaertor Foundation. There were three working sessions and two discussion panels, where 35 speakers exchanged experiences and proposals, emphasising the need—and the unique opportunity—to mobilise public and private synergies to improve Spain’s position.

For Spain, the main challenge is to bridge the gap between the success achieved in the fields of basic biomedical research (in the top ten according to bibliometric ranks), and the success in clinical research (Spain has moved to the top one in Europe) through a more competitive preclinical research ecosystem. The translation of academic discoveries into clinical trials and the need to focus research on patient needs were a recurrent issue of the discussions, as well as the lack of private, non-profit, philanthropic funding. This requires a paradigm shift in scientific research, promoting precompetitive collaboration, data sharing, and a long-term vision that prioritises unmet clinical needs.

Prof. Vázquez participated in the work session devoted to European Chemical Libraries and presented the experience of our laboratory submitting samples to EU-OPENSCREEN.