Paris-Saclay University and Northeastern University Engage in Scientific Collaboration to Prevent the Trade of Substandard/Falsified Medical Products
On 3 and 4 May, Paris-Saclay University participated in the workshop Sense, Disrupt, and Prevent the Trade of Substandard/Falsified Medical Products organized by its North American partner, Northeastern University, in collaboration with colleagues from two other US universities (Boston University and University of Houston). The invitation came from Prof Nikos Passas, Professor at the Northeastern School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Distinguished Lecturer in Financial Integrity Law at Case Western Reserve University, a scientific collaborator of the Paris-Saclay research team.
The two-day online workshop included two keynote speakers emphasizing the necessity to look for new methods for detecting substandard or falsified (SF) medical products and 6 panel discussions involving key public and private stakeholders addressing various aspects of the SF medical products issue. Geoffroy Bessaud, pharmacist, former Global Head of Anticounterfeiting Activities at Sanofi and currently Head of the NGO OPALS (PanAfrican Organization for Health) represented the Paris-Saclay research team, which closely collaborates with OPALS, in the Panel discussing Public and Private Partnerships for Pandemics and Micro-epidemics, and shared his thoughts on the benefits of collaboration between public and private institutions in the fight against SF products.
The workshop was an excellent opportunity to share some positive practices and ideas in the field and helped to identify further collaborative initiatives between Northeastern University and Paris-Saclay University, long-term partners nurturing academic and scientific relations in a wide array of scientific areas. The teams are convinced that raising awareness of the problem among diverse cohorts of populations and providing education to all stakeholders, including students, are key factors to gain further momentum and efficiency.
Currently, ongoing discussions and plans focus on delivering joint online lectures and seminars for students from Northeastern and Paris-Saclay University (Faculty of Pharmacy and Graduate School HeaDS (Health and Drug Sciences)), in strong collaboration with OPALS and, potentially, pharmaceutical companies. “Each lecture could last for one hour, followed by discussion time for the students to ask questions. Another format of conference already implemented in other universities could be a sequence of three lectures, each one lasting 20 to 30 minutes, followed by Q&A time for the students to interact with the three speakers”, explained Quentin Duteil, General Secretary of the OPALS Foundation and Paris-Saclay University PhD student.
The partner institutions believe that these lectures could become an excellent means for both universities to better explore the issue of falsified medicine trafficking and raise awareness about multiple facets of this problem worldwide, thus paving the ground for the development of bilateral academic and scientific initiatives in this area of research.