OMS World Patient Safety Day and Mimesis Srl: an interview. 17 September marks the 5th World Patient Safety Day (WPSD), promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) whose theme this year will be ‘Safe Medication’ related to the global campaign ‘Medication without Harm’. The aim of this day is to raise awareness of the impact that medication errors and unsafe practices can have on the patient, emphasizing the need for urgent action to improve the safety of the medication pathway and, consequently, the safety of the patient himself. It is in this context that Mimesis SRL acts, an innovative start-up in the medical-scientific field born in 2020 as a spin-off of the University of Catania. The work of Mimesis is fundamentally based on reproducing phenomena of a structural-chemical-biological nature through In Silico technology, i.e. through the use of computational models capable of almost completely reproducing the general behaviour of the immune system, and simulating its responses both in the presence of viruses, bacteria, tumors and autoimmune diseases, and in the presence of pharmacological therapies. It is therefore clear that, thanks to this approach, which does not involve the use of humans in the experimental stages of research, patient safety is almost completely guaranteed. We met Professor Francesco Pappalardo and Dr Giulia Russo, founders of the company, to discuss the issue of patient safety applied to their research. Professor Francesco Pappalardo is Associate Professor of Informatics at the Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences at the University of Catania, where he also holds the position of Deputy Director of the Department. In addition, since 2016, he is Visiting Professor at the Boston University and Health Informatics Research Lab, Computer Science Department and Adjunct Professor at University of Griffith, Australia. Dr Giulia Russo gained her PhD in “Basic and Applied Biomedical Sciences” in 2018 with a special interest in computational and systems biology topics. From 2018 to 2020 she was a Research Fellow at the Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences, University of Catania. Since 2020 she has been a Research Fellow in Computer Science at the same Department. She also teaches Computer Science at the CdLM in Pharmacy of the University of Catania and she is Adjunct Research Fellow at University of Griffith, Australia. Good morning to you. Before we begin, can you briefly introduce yourselves? F-Good morning, I am Francesco Pappalardo. I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences at the University of Catania, where I also hold the position of Deputy Director of the Department. I am also Adjunct Professor at Boston University in the United States and Griffith University in Australia. G-Hello everyone. My name is Giulia Russo. I teach Computer Science at the CdLM in Pharmacy of the University of Catania and I am a Chief Research Officer at MIMESIS. I am also holding a position of Adjunct Research Fellow at University of Griffith, Australia. What does your research consist of and what diseases do you focus on? Our research consists of the development and implementation of an in silico platform, the Universal Immune System Simulator (UISS), which simulates the immune system in order to observe the course of specific diseases and their treatments, and to predict the immune response towards a pathogen and/or a therapy. We are mainly focused on infectious disease, such as tuberculosis, COVID-19, or on tumors, such as mammary carcinoma, or on autoimmune disease, such as multiple sclerosis. For the latter we are developing a M&S platform able to predict the outcome of a disease: using a digital patient, created from a set of features, the M&S platform can represent the real one and, therefore, it can modify the therapy selecting the one that has the best therapeutic effect. M&S is also going to speed up the drug discovery pipeline and it can provide strong and formal tools to assess credibility and uncertainty quantification of M&S applied to healthcare. What does MIMESIS offer? MIMESIS is an innovative startup and spin-off of the University of Catania that applies computational models to the pharmaceutical/nutraceutical sector, allowing the simulation of phenomena of a structural-chemical-biological nature.Mimesis offers the first generation of “In Silico” solutions to the biomedical industry and pharmaceutical companies to reduce time and costs in the research and development process of medicinal products. What are the results obtained so far?And the benefits for the patients? Thanks to the In Silico technology we are able to predict the best treatment regimen for the patient profile of interest. We have drastically reduced the number of in vivo experiments, which means significant cost savings; we are also able to provide a better prediction of the toxicity profile of medical products, which means almost completely avoiding severe side effects. These technologies and methodologies can make ad-personam therapies available for everyone, despite differences in income, social status, living country, race, and cultural origins. Can we therefore say that in silico technology will be able to predict the effects of long-term therapy on patients with serious diseases? Modelling and simulation can speed up the development of new therapies and, at the same time, predict, almost completely, their outcomes on a patient: we believe, therefore, that the effects of a therapy can be predicted even in the long term. One last question: what future do you foresee for in silico research? Today, the healthcare industry faces many challenges: one of the most important is the pandemic emergency, so the need to adopt these new technologies is increasing. We believe that in silico technology can accelerate and optimize the pharmaceutical device discovery process and, consequently, lower production costs. Furthermore, the use of virtual patients has made it possible to almost completely eliminate the use of humans, thus demonstrating that it cares about ethics. We are convinced that, in this extraordinary multidisciplinary context in which in silico medicine operates, everything can be powerful and possible! Thank you. Italian Version Il 17 settembre ricorre la V° giornata internazionale sulla sicurezza dei pazienti (WPSD), promossa dall’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità (OMS) il cui tema …
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