Inspiring. Intense. Enjoyable. These are some of the words participants and organisers used to describe the first REMEDi4ALL Hackathon that took place Monday 27th – Friday 31st May in Barcelona, Spain.
Under the backdrop of Montserrat, 15 early career researchers from REMEDi4ALL institutions across Europe came together to work on drug repurposing solutions for rare neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) in the first REMEDi4ALL Hackathon.
Participants worked together in 3 multidisciplinary teams composed of medical students, physicians, postgraduate researchers, and health economists. Together they had a challenge: design a repurposing development plan with candidate compounds for Rett Syndrome, Dravet Syndrome and CDKL5 deficiency disorder. Furthermore, participants only had one week to explore the entire drug repurposing pathway in a schedule packed with plenary sessions and group work.
“We want to recreate what we are doing in REMEDi4ALL in a simple manner to promote a deeper understanding of the drug repurposing pathway in participants as well as create connections across the REMEDi4ALL network.” – Berta Gumí, Head of Training and Education at Teamit and Hackathon organiser.
Throughout the week, participants worked in teams to discover, list, and prioritise potential drugs for their neurodegenerative disorder of interest to create a Target Product Profile. With the help of experts in the field of drug repurposing, participants then took a deep dive into the drug repurposing pathway, considering essential factors like patient engagement, scientific advice, funding, type of use and regulatory approval to make a Repurposing Development Plan.
Importantly, participants also had the opportunity to discuss their repurposing plans with patient representatives, gaining a greater understanding of patient perspectives and its importance in the development of new treatments for rare and ultra-rare diseases. Insights gained from these discussions led to participants reconsidering potential drugs of interest.
“It was interesting to know that what you are thinking as a researcher is not necessarily what the patient wants.” – George Obeng, Syreon Research Institute
The experience was challenging due to time constraints and the work required to explore the repurposing pathway “in-mini” in depth for compounds and diseases of interest. Despite this, participants rose to the challenge and organisers were impressed with their determination, motivation, and teamwork skills.
Participants also took the opportunity to network outside the classroom. One teambuilding activity which participants particularly enjoyed was playing the board game “REPURPOLIS”. Designed by Rosan Vegter, Rare Disease Innovation Officer at EATRIS, this interactive game guides players through different stages of the drug repurposing pathway. Through a trial-and-error approach, players must make decisions at each stage of the repurposing pathway, deal with unexpected events, budget and reach the end of the pathway before running out of time or money. The game is both entertaining and informative, situating participants within the world of drug repurposing in an engaging way. Participants described it as “drug repurposing made fun”.
“This is where repurposing and training come together in an excellent way.” – Rosan Vetger, Rare Disease Innovation Officer, EATRIS
To round off the week, participants presented their Repurposing Development Plans to an expert panel who were thoroughly impressed with all their hard work and original ideas. Moreover, the team which proposed repurposing the commonly used steroid Desoximetasone for CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder, won free registration to a drug repurposing conference to reward their efforts throughout the week. Participants left the Hackathon with a better understanding of the drug repurposing pathway, interesting insights to take forward in their future and a new network of colleagues to connect with.
“A key part of REMEDi4ALL is training, mentorship and engaging early career researchers to not only be inspired by the possibilities of drug repurposing but to be more skilled in how to effectively bring new treatments to patients. We hope to inspire the students here to further explore these opportunities.” – Donald Lo, Director for Medicines Development at EATRIS and Scientific Lead of the REMEDi4ALL European Platform for Medicines Repurposing
Given the success of this years’ debut Hackathon, REMEDi4ALL plans to open the 2nd annual REMEDi4ALL Hackathon in 2025 to early career researchers from any academic institution. If you or your colleagues are interested in attending or becoming involved, keep up to date with REMEDi4ALL social channels or sign up to our Newsletter where information will be released on the 2025 Hackathon.
