The Netherlands Invests €325 into Patient-Centered Preclinical Oncology Drug Development

April 18, 2022

The Dutch National Growth Fund has announced it’s investing €325 ($351 million) into preclinical oncology drug development through the Oncode-Pact project. The goal of Oncode-Pact is to encourage greater collaboration between researchers, with hopes of changing the cancer drug development landscape. The researchers will come from multiple organizations and seek to incorporate novel technologies into their work.

According to Alain Kummer, chair of Oncode-Pact, in a Fierce Biotech article by Nick Paul Taylor, “In the current situation, the preclinical development process is still insufficiently connected with the clinical practice, and we focus on the patient too late in the drug development process. By deploying patient data and tissues from patients early in the development process—for example organoid technology and artificial intelligence—it is possible to assess whether a potential drug could be effective and safe much earlier in the process than is currently possible, and with greater certainty.”