Q1: Can you explain the role and involvement of SYNAPSE in eTRANSAFE?

Synapse has had a dynamic and central role in eTRANSAFE since its onset. As the managing partner, Synapse has participated in all the stages of the project from its conception to its final sustainability strategy.

This active involvement is reflected in the many roles the company has played in these 66 months of project duration. Synapse has been part of the eTRANSAFE Executive Committee, responsible for the scientific coordination of the initiative. We´ve also coordinated the activities of the project Sustainability Task Force, which had a decisive role in designing the overall approach towards the continuity of project data and developments. As part of our tasks within the eTRANSAFE Project Management Office (PMO), Synapse has led the project outreach activities and has set and overseen organizational procedures to ensure smooth administrative, financial, and legal management.

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Q2: What has been SYNAPSE’s greatest achievement?

As a managing partner the role of SYNAPSE is often a silent one. The apparent absence of issues is usually the principal sign of the work that is being done “in the shadows” towards ensuring fluent communication within the consortium and that project tasks are carried out as planned and timelines met.

However, I believe our greatest achievements have been involved with driving and supporting decisive actions at important times, such as incorporating a new development partner that resulted key to project success and supporting the process towards the future continuity of eTRANSAFE assets.

In this sense, I believe that the granting of the eTRANSAFE Award for Outstanding Individual Industry Contribution, voted by the consortium members, is a recognition to the whole SYNAPSE team of our work in different areas throughout the project.

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Q3: What has been eTRANSAFE’s biggest accomplishment?

To talk about eTRANSAFE, is to talk about the will to enhance and optimize the process of drug safety assessment. The development of medicines remains a lengthy and costly process, with a low success rate. It takes between 10 to 15 years to bring a new drug to market, with the staggering cost of around 900 million Euros.

To improve the feasibility and reliability of translational safety assessment during the process of drug discovery, eTRANSAFE developed the ToxHub platform. ToxHub is an integrative data infrastructure that incorporates and analyses clinical and preclinical data, coupled with innovative computational methods and tools. With this the project has taken an important step towards the optimization of drug safety assessment that will increase efficiency in research and development across health research.

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Q4: What are your thoughts on eTRANSAFE continuing in the future?

Most collaborative initiatives fail to achieve real sustainability for the assets developed during the project. To ensure the post-project preservation of the work carried out by the consortium, eTRANSAFE has undertaken a strategic, twofold approach to sustainability.

On one hand, this approach has resulted in the continuation of the ToxHub platform by a private entity with the intent to offer it as a commercial product. On the other hand, the long-term preservation of eTRANSAFE data and developments has also been ensured through a legacy repository set up by one of the project honest brokers, as well as by sharing source code and related information of many of the project assets through public repositories.

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