GOT-IT Guidelines for Target Assessment

Academic research plays a key role in identifying new drug targets, including understanding target biology and links between targets and disease states. To lead to new drugs, however, research must progress from purely academic exploration to the initiation of efforts to identify and test a drug candidate in clinical trials, which are typically conducted by the biopharma industry. This transition can be facilitated by a timely focus on target assessment aspects such as target-related safety issues, druggability and assayability, as well as the potential for target modulation to achieve differentiation from established therapies.

The GOT-IT guidelines have been designed to support academic scientists and funders of translational research in identifying and prioritizing target assessment activities and in defining a critical path to reach scientific goals as well as goals related to licensing, partnering with industry or initiating clinical development programs. Based on sets of guiding questions for different areas of target assessment, the GOT-IT framework is intended to stimulate academic scientists’ awareness of factors that make translational research more robust and efficient, and to facilitate academia–industry collaboration.

COMING SOON: Visit the BRAINCommons to interact with colleagues using the GOT-IT Expert Platform.

GOT-IT Expert Platform

The GOT-IT recommendations consider the complexity of tasks associated with bridging the gap between basic science research findings and the identification of clinically effective products. The guidelines suggest the need for an environment where academic research teams focusing on newly identified drug targets can connect with experienced and qualified expert industry teams in support of successful drug discovery and development. The GOT-IT Expert Platform is designed to facilitate these interactions. Based on an innovative match-making algorithm, the platform helps academic scientists recruit drug discovery experts, receive timely and well-informed advice, and develop a more extended network of partnerships to ultimately increase the exchange between Industry and Academia. A set of onboarding questions ensures that project-specific goals and individual needs are taken into account so that productive collaborations can provide the most relevant and meaningful support for early-phase translational drug discovery programs.

BRAINCommons

The GOT-IT Expert Platform is hosted in the BRAINCommons, the cloud-based platform for computational discovery designed for the brain health community.

The BRAINCommons provides access to the Community, a social media-based cognitive network that facilitates productive collaboration by analyzing data provided by the research community and algorithmically generating suggestions for who should collaborate and why. This data is collected by answering a series of onboarding questions as a part of a user’s community profile to understand research interests and area of focus or expertise.

By applying a recommendation algorithm to the information collected, the BRAINCommons promotes successful, complimentary connections in support of Team Science. Leveraging this BRAINCommons Community infrastructure, the GOT-IT Expert Platform will include specific onboarding questions related to therapeutic and target validation areas of interest or expertise, molecular target class, treatment approach, etc. designed to match industry expertise related to formal drug discovery with academic expertise related to newly identified drug targets. GOT-IT Expert Platform participants can choose to share information and collaborate within the BRAINCommons Community.

Funding

This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) program Targetvalidierung für die pharmazeutische Wirkstoffentwicklung (Funding reference numbers: 16GW0192K and 16GW0193). The GOT-IT Team would like to thank Cohen Veterans Bioscience as a partner for developing the GOT-IT Expert Platform.

About Cohen Veterans Bioscience

Cohen Veterans Bioscience is a non-profit 501(c)(3) biomedical research and technology organization dedicated to advancing brain health by fast-tracking precision diagnostics and tailored therapeutics.
Learn More at CohenVeteransBioscience.org