On February 19th 2020 OIFE was again represented at an EURORDIS event in Brussels. Vice President Dace Liepina participated at the 29th EURORDIS Round Table of Companies Workshop “How to teach an old medicine new tricks – The importance of repurposing medicines for patients”.

The meeting is primarily for pharma companies, but also open for patient organizations. The workshop provided valuable information to its participants with the following objectives:

• Build on existing repurposing efforts and discuss innovative platforms to boost re-purposing research
• Understand the STAMP initiative on re-purposing and it’s potential benefits for rare disease patients
• Understand the opportunity for companies to increase their portfolio of products while also helping to reduce costs and facilitate access to rare disease products
• Explain the potential for academia, patient organisations and healthcare companies to work more collaboratively together to discover the opportunities for re-purposing products for rare diseases
• Explore how academia and patient organisations can find research funding to pursue re-purposing for rare diseases
• Understand the positive impact for rare disease patients if companies open their library of compounds to academics
• Learn how patient organisations could facilitate the repurposing process

From OIFE’s perspective the workshop provided valuable insights as well as networking opportunities.
You can read more and download the whole programme here.