The PREMIER project held its 4th General Assembly Meeting (GAM) in a virtual setting. The event was organised over three afternoon sessions where partners and scientific advisory board members were able to discuss the project achievements and upcoming challenges as well as to make decisions about the compounds selected for testing.
The first session, was focused on the compound selection of workpackage (WP) 1 (Prioritisation and Environmental Assessment of APIs). WP1.1 and WP1.2 presented nine (9) Mode-of-Action (MoA) driven selected compounds and six (6) risk-based pre-selected compounds respectively. Both outlined the compound pharmacological properties as well as the reason for their selection. Six compounds were approved by the Consortium for both WP1.1 and 1.2, while three of the compounds selected in WP1.2 are pending further discussions due to potential MoA overlaps with the WP1.1 list. If you would like to know more about WP1.2 compound selection please read this article.
On the second session, updates on WP4 (Guidance and Application) were provided. Partners from WP4.2 presented the results of the interviews carried out with drug discovery and development experts of seven major pharmaceutical companies to explore the feasibility of incorporating environmental considerations into the pharmaceutical R&D process. Read this article if you´d like to know more about these results. Additionally, a discussion was held on WP3 (ERA Database and Digital Assessment System -DAS-) so that improvements and additional functionality can be progressively added to the PREMIER DAS. Check this article to know more about the database and DAS that PREMIER is developing.
The third session was fully focused on WP2 (Exposure and Effect Tools), where a variety of PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers were able to showcase their work in PREMIER. Topics presented included: read-across models between sludge and sediment, uptake models for fish, antipsychotic drug effects in fish, bioavailability studies, in vitro 3D fish hepatocyte cultures and the development of integrated effect models. Additionally, plans for studying the concentrations of pharmaceuticals in European rivers were also outlined.
During this 4th GAM, some of the main achievements made by the PREMIER Consortium were presented, but also, the challenges expected in the upcoming months. The importance of improving communications within and across WPs was highlighted so that interdependencies between the project activities can be better anticipated and we can develop the synergies to deliver even more. Following this stimulating and enlightening Consortium meeting, the PREMIER participants look forward to our next (5th) GAM in October 2022.
