Inspired by the innovative and collaborative nature of one of Italy’s and history’s most brilliant minds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Dompé farmaceutici hosted roundtable, Embracing the Challenge in Science, sparked an important conversation about the critical partnership between industry and academia in driving science forward.  The roundtable, held in Washington D.C., brought together perspectives from leading researchers and business leaders including (list).  The roundtable event also introduced the most recent recipients of the Dompe Foundation’s Rita Levi Montalcini Fellowships. 

As stated by Maria Angela Zappia, Italy’s US Ambassador to the United States, “Science is important for diplomacy” and never is this more apparent than when seeking to overcome public health challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Leonardo da Vinci’s approach to science was based on intense observation and detailed drawings and notes of what he learned through his primary tool of investigation – his eyes.  Today, da Vinci’s ability to make connections across the arts, science, humanities and technology is relevant to how innovation needs to be fostered today. 

Kicking off the roundtable, discussion, Gary Pisano, author of Creative Construction, The Dna of Constructive innovation and Harvard Business School Associate Dean, pointed out that there are three themes shaping the future of bioscience: the increasing convergence of science and business, the rapid emergence of AI as a tool for drug discovery and the importance of trust and partnership.  He further states that the companies most likely to thrive in the future will be bi-cultural -- able to function well in the world of science and the world of business.    

As science evolves, experts pointed out that future innovations will be the output of a new set of partners.  In addition to biologists, chemists, and the biopharmaceutical business community, engineers and technologists will play increasingly important roles.  From artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ExScalate, that hasten drug discovery, to data insights drawn from EMRs that may predict outcomes of treatments for distinct populations, data science is a critical component of the future of medicine. Big data, insurance company information, EMR, offer an opportunity to learn more about practice trends and clinical correlations that we may not have thought about. This next frontier including AI, leads to increased collaboration with engineers and data scientists who will perceive the outputs of information in different languages than a biologist. 

Andrew Pekosz, Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, underscored the importance of using technology at the site of diagnosis to try and predict if an individual will develop severe disease. Business and scientific collaboration is essential to technologies such as miniaturizing assays so that data can be analyzed close to real time to individualize a patient's treatment. 

One of the things that a review of insights from EMRs has shown is the distinct differences between men and women not only in our hormones but in our immune systems. Sabra Klein notes that during COVID-19, men were consistently more likely to be in intensive care units or die from COVID-19 and 70% of long Covid patients are women.  We have seen data from ExScalate that has shown the interactions of the Spike Protein in the SARS Covid virus that has uncovered interactions with factors such as estrogen receptors.  Technology – both AI and data insights from ER – are connecting the dots in how viruses interact with nuclear receptors such as estrogen.  

In addition to the role of collaboration in his work, Dompé’s Marcello Allegretti notes that Leonardo da Vinci and the Nobel Prize winning Rita Levi Montalcini, acted on intuition. That intuition, when combined with technology, leads to the transformative innovation that allows us to use science to embrace challenges we don't even know exist." 

That is certainly the case with Rita Levi Montalcini and Stanley Cohen’s work in Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) which was discovered as a molecule to drive the growth of neurons and initially thought to be a treatment for diseases of the brain.  But, it took a partnership between research and industry, and a plant that could replicate the neurons in a way that could be scaled for research and development, to lead to its first application as a treatment for ophthalmic disease and further collaborations are paving the way for what will come next in NGF research.   

Mina Massaro Giordano points out that "Rita Levi Montalcini was an amazing female scientist who had to overcome many adversities on her road to discovering nerve growth factor. 50 years later, the marriage of industry and science have led to important discoveries that would not have been possible without the collaboration between industry and science."  

Sergio Dompé closed the roundtable by pointing out that the genius of Leonardo da Vinci is that of establishing a model that makes it possible to compete and collaborate with others to innovate.  “Life is made of opportunities and if you look at innovation models today, 80% is coming from small companies working with universities and hospitals … Dompé relies on this interaction between scientists and industries and today are introducing the next generation of young people to work this way – the new recipients of the Rita Levi Montalcini fellowship who represent the future of collaborative innovation between scientists and industry.”