Sandwich, Kent, September 9 2019 – The Chairman of Discovery Park, a thriving high-quality science park playing a key role in the South East of England’s life sciences community, will be addressing important drivers in the development of the Park at a series of conferences in the Autumn. At events organized by CRACK IT, Life Sciences Integrates, and Cancer Research UK Martino Picardo is looking forward to talking about his experience in open innovation, pre-competitive collaboration and entrepreneurship. Activities in these areas are part of the growth strategy for Discovery Park and its tenants.

On September 11 in London, Dr Picardo will be launching a review of the NC3Rs (National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research) CRACK IT open innovation platform, which funds collaborations between industry, academia and SMEs. NC3Rs supports the best science and animal welfare at large and small business, and the CRACK IT open innovation platform provides a unique mechanism to deliver advances in this area.

In order to translate new discoveries into patient benefit, Cancer Research UK has established a PACE (Promote an Academic Culture of Entrepreneurship) team focused on driving entrepreneurial activity in its research community. This programme will be launched at the Cancer Research UK Innovation Summit 2019 on October 7 at Alderley Park, Manchester, where Dr Picardo will chair a panel discussing the infrastructure available to support entrepreneurialism.

Finally on November 19 in London he will be attending Pharma Integrates 2019, ‘Shaping Pharma’s Future’, where he will take part in a panel on ‘Accelerating early stage productivity’. This will address the question of whether strategic relationships across the value chain, between CDMOs, CROs, large pharma companies and academia, could accelerate the rate of innovation and decrease early failure rates.