Dear BioSim partners and invited external participants,
On behalf of the EU-sponsored Network of Excellence in ‘Biosimulation – A New Tool in Drug Development’ it is a great pleasure for me to invite you to take part in the 5th annual BioSim Conference. While the first two conferences in Mallorca served to establish new and productive forms of collaboration within each of our 19 projects (or workpackages), the third and fourth conferences (in Postdam and Budapest) extended these collaborations within and across our six activity areas.
The purpose of this final BioSim conference is to present our scientific and clinical achievements to a broader forum of academic, industrial and regulatory colleagues. We can be rightly proud of the enormous number of scientific papers published over the years by BioSim’s participants, the high scientific standard of these papers, and the influence the results have had on the understanding and acceptance of our modelling and simulation approach. During the past years, we have published several books and monographs and edited a significant number of special issues of different journals.
However, at the same time we want to use this conference to engage more directly with the public in a discussion on a number of essential problems that relate to the development and application of mechanism-based models of living organisms. When and why are mechanism-based models more advantageous than data-driven models? To what extent can mathematical models of living organisms claim to have predictive powers? Can we demonstrate the practical advantages of the modelling and simulation approach in the treatment of patients and in the development of new drugs? What potential reduction in costs and animal experiments can we offer in drug development? How can we organise the proper education of qualified scientists in this field?
In view of the important and general nature of some of these issues we have chosen The Danish Medicines Agency and The Danish Parliament (Christiansborg) as the conference venues and we have invited leading politicians, industrialists, clinicians and opinion makers to take part in our discussions. I very much hope that you will find the program interesting both scientifically and educationally.
Erik Mosekilde, BioSim Coordinator