Brussels - The project REMEDi4ALL, an ambitious EU-funded research initiative, is expected to make a major leap forward in drug repurposing, or finding new therapeutic option for existing drugs, in areas where there are high unmet medical needs. It will receive 23 million euros from Horizon Europe over the next 5 years.

REMEDi4ALL launched today with the aim of making a major leap forward in drug repurposing. This promising approach to drug development consisting in the identification, testing, and validation of new therapeutic indications for existing medications, is a developing field but faces numerous barriers and systemic inefficiencies. Still, its potential to significantly bring down times and costs of drug development -it focuses on already approved, discontinued, shelved or investigational therapeutics- makes this novel strategy attractive for rare and neglected conditions, cancer, emerging public health threats such as COVID-19 or new drug combinations. It also translates into more sustainable health systems.

REMEDi4ALL, a consortium involving 24 European organisations, whereof the Anticancer Fund, with the common goal of making cost-effective repurposed medicines more widely available, will:

• develop an innovation platform supporting promising, high impact drug repurposing projects championed by patients in any phase of development and disease area;
• establish a global community that contributes to informing and shaping policy and advancing debate and knowledge exchange worldwide.

The Anticancer Fund has been a leader in the field of repurposing non-cancer drugs as new cancer treatments and has developed expertise in issues around health policy and regulatory obstacles to repurposing for many years. We will now be working with the other stakeholders of REMEDi4ALL to develop new policy recommendations to address these obstacles with a view to improving the process whereby repurposed drugs can be implemented as new standard of care therapies for patients. Additionally, we will focus on clinical research funding for repurposing, looking at ways to increase funding, improve coordination and help develop clinical research programs that more fully support repurposing.

To advance knowledge in this field and address substantial obstacles -fragmented and siloed research; non-standardised datasets; heterogenous quality of computational tools; poor patient engagement or lack of incentives and policies to support and enhance drug repurposing- the European Union (EU) through the Horizon Europe (HE) programme will invest 23 million euros in REMEDi4ALL over the next 5 years. It is expected that, due to REMEDi4ALL, more (and better) repurposed therapeutics will be widely available thanks to more agile, cutting-edge development processes, ultimately contributing to increased sustainability of health systems.    

A favourable eco-system for drug repurposing

The project kicks off with the ambition of establishing a European research and innovation eco-system that facilitates fast and cost-effective patient-centric development and access to repurposed medicines. To this end, REMEDi4ALL will:

• build a state-of-the-art platform to provide expertise and services across the complete value chain (scientific, methodological, financial, legal, regulatory, intellectual property) for patient-centric medicine repurposing at every development stage and in any disease area.
• assemble advanced in silico tools for Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), open datasets and tools and expertise required to understand the mechanism of action of specific medicines.
• create a global community of practice connected in a think-tank-like environment through impactful multidisciplinary activities and events.
• train and educate the next generation of researchers, clinicians, patients, policymakers, regulators and funders in cutting-edge drug repurposing tools and processes.
• favour dialogue and debate to advance policy and fair access to repurposed medicines across the EU.

REMEDi4ALL has selected four medicine repurposing projects in different stages of development to demonstrate the viability of the newly created platform. Each project covers a different therapeutic area with high unmet medical needs– pancreatic cancer, COVID-19, rare diseases and ultra-rare diseases. These projects will first be onboarded to ensure a patient-centric approach before testing all elements of the platform to optimise its tools and services.

A multidisciplinary effort to cover every aspect of drug repurposing

The REMEDi4ALL consortium brings together a unique combination of expertise to address the complexities of drug repurposing. Under the leadership of EATRIS, the European infrastructure for translational medicine, 24 organisations in the fields of clinical and translational research, clinical operations, patient engagement and education, regulatory framework, funding, governance, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) or pricing and reimbursement will closely collaborate to make drug repurposing mainstream.

“It’s an enormous privilege to work with this team of leading international experts, institutions and patient representatives in such an important and high potential area for European health. REMEDI4ALL will truly transform drug repurposing by making the process more transparent, efficient and – most importantly – completely patient-centred” expressed Anton Ussi, CEO at EATRIS ERIC.

The 24 partners participants include:

• EATRIS (Coordinator) – The Netherlands
• Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft – Germany
• Helsingin yliopisto (FIMM-UH) - Finland
• European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network (ECRIN) - France
• Istituto Di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri (IRFMN) - Italy
• Istituto Nazionale Tumori Fondazione Pascale (INT-NA) - Italy
• European Organisation For Rare Diseases (EURORDIS) – France
• Dompé farmaceutici Spa (DOMPÉ) – Italy
• ZonMw – The Netherlands
• Teamit Research - Spain
• Medicines For Europe (M4EU) - Belgium
• Syreon Kutato Intezet Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag (SRI) - Hungary
• Karolinska Institutet (KI) - Sweden
• Chemotargets - Spain
• Anticancer Fund (ACF) - Belgium
• Univerza V Ljubljani - Slovenia
• Bundesinstitut für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte (BfArM) - Germany,
• Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli (IOR) - Italy
• Servicio Madrileño De Salud (SERMAS) - Spain.
• Uppsala Universitet (UU) - Sweden
• Universitaetsmedizin Goettingen (UMG) – Germany
• Beacon: For Rare Diseases (BEACON) - United Kingdom The University Of Sheffield (USFD) - United Kingdom
• University Of Hull (UHULL) – United Kingdom

More information

• Website: https://remedi4all.org
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/REMEDi4ALL/ 
• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/remedi4all/ 
• Facebook - https://fb.me/REMEDi4ALL

Drug repurposing is the underrated champion of innovation in oncology. Discover more about the leadership work of the Anticancer Fund in this particular domain here.