Fiocruz integrates board of international platform for medicines repositioning

By means of its Center for Technological Development in Health (CDTS), Fiocruz is now part of  Repurposing of Medicines 4ALL – REMEDI4ALL, a project financed by the European Commission with the goal of supporting medicines repurposing. Initially conceived to work for five years and with a budget of 25 million euros, the platform is made up of 26 institutions from all over the world, including hospitals, research institutions, regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and patients’ associations.

The CDTS will be represented by attorney Marco Tulio de Barros e Castro in the Council of Policies, whose first meeting was held on 20 and 21 September, in Amsterdam.

One of the activities of the project is to present recommendations regarding policies that can facilitate the repurposing of medicines (intellectual property, regulation, access to markets), in addition to providing scientific and legal support.

The participation of the CDTS in the platform is the result of a partnership with the European infrastructure for translational medicine (Eatris), whose memorandum of intentions was signed in 2020. The invitation to be a part of REMEDI4ALL came after that.

“COVID-19 highlighted the issue of drug repurposing”, explained Castro, who is a lawyer of the Innovation Office of CDTS/Fiocruz. “The logic is that developing new drugs is expensive and takes a lot of time. Using medicines that already exist saves time and money. There is also the fact that using drugs that already exist raises few concerns regarding their safety”, he added. This can be particularly significant in the case of rare diseases, for which developing new drugs is very costly.

Fiocruz itself is currently doing research on drug repurposing. For Castro, in addition to providing support, the platform should bring researchers and funding sources closer to each other.