grit42 plays a key role in the EU project VICT3R, launched today to reduce the need for animals in medical research. The aim is to replace live animals with virtual control groups that can be used for nonclinical drug and chemical safety evaluation.
VICT3R is funded by the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU) and has 33 partner organizations - including 13 of the largest pharmaceutical companies, 6 academic institutions and a range of small and medium-sized enterprises.
We are one of them and we are proud to be part of the project. Our part will be to develop the platform and database that will contain the historical data from animal studies and from which researchers will be able to generate virtual control groups.
“The purpose is threefold: Reducing the use of animals by reusing large amounts of historical data, reducing costs by not having to buy new animals for control groups, and finally improving quality because instead of, for example, 20 live control animals, it will be possible to generate 100 or 200 virtual animals and thus get a stronger statistical basis for the study,” explains Claus Stie Kallesøe, CEO of grit42.
It is the grit data management platform for preclinical drug research that over the next 3.5 years will be rebuilt and expanded to handle the large amounts of data that VICT3R is based on.
“We aim to end up where, instead of buying new animals and using them as a control group for a toxicology study, a researcher should be able to generate virtual control groups that completely match the parameters of the study. We can do this because of the amount of data we will collect in the project. We have 13 of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Europe contributing with their data,” says Claus Stie Kallesøe.
VICT3R will run for 42 months and grit42 will receive 13.5 million DKK to develop the platform.
“It's a big project for us, so we will probably have to hire new employees so that we can continue to deliver on our other activities on the side,” he says.