TRACER has been nominated for the “Groninger Ondernemings Prijs”, abbreviated “GOP”, and translated “Groninger enterprise award”! An award that, every year for more than 25 years, has been given to a Groningen-based company making an impact. As part of the award, we can engage with interesting organizations and local stakeholders in organized meetings. At the first meeting, we already got the chance to present TRACER, and our methods to accelerate drug development.
Groningen, the Netherlands
Our roots are in Groningen, and we maintain good research collaborations here with our clinical partners. Over the years we have expanded our team in Groningen. We use this area to find new talent and help to develop the new generation of life science professionals. The GOP nomination helps greatly in this aspect. This is important because specialists in this field can be hard to find.
GOP is helping our goal: make Phase 0 mainstream
The GOP nomination helps us to tell our story. One of TRACER’s goals is to make Phase 0 the standard first step in clinical drug development. In other words, the first test of a new drug in humans. In these clinical trials, our molecular imaging solutions visualize whether the investigated drug reaches the target and can achieve the desired effect. Investigated medicines that fail in Phase 0 would otherwise fail approximately 5-10 years later. When Phase 0 is successful the chances increase for a drug to reach the market, and become available to patients.
The solution to a broader social problem
Improving drug development has a direct impact on the high prices and development times of new drugs. Since about 90% of new drugs currently fail in clinical trials, this results in a loss of valuable time, investment, and available participants for research. By introducing Phase 0 for the current pathway, only drugs with a high chance of success would proceed.
