We are thrilled to launch our new interview series, Minds Behind VICT3R, where we spotlight the talented individuals shaping the success of the VICT3R project.
In our first edition, we’re excited to feature Claus Stie Kallesøe from grit42! Claus shares his background and sheds light on the pivotal role grit42 plays in advancing the project’s mission to reduce the use of animals in toxicology research.
1. Who is Claus Stie Kallesøe, and what is grit42?
I started my career as a medicinal chemist within neuroscience. Moved to compound management, logistics and data management. Then studied software development and later an EMBA in France. I headed up Lundbecks internal global research informatics group for 15 years before founding grit42 with 3 colleagues in 2014. grit42 is focused on supporting data management in the biopharma preclinical drug discovery space. We are self-funded and owned by the founders. I function as the CEO of the company.2. What motivated you to get involved in the VICT3R project?
Firstly, it’s a big consortium with many partners. That’s always exciting!
Secondly, it’s a new domain for us in grit42. We move downstream into pharma early development and the GXP space. So lot’s for us to learn and many new people to interact with. After 25 years in preclinical drug discovery it’s refreshing to see something new. Finally, the VCG concept is something we need to develop in the project and get regulatory acceptance to use in the filings going forward. That’s certainly an interesting challenge – also from a software development/platform perspective.3. How does your expertise help drive VICT3R’s goals forward?
The grit42 founder team have worked together for 25 years developing and maintaining databases for preclinical data. And in some of the current big IMI projects we are part of we already store data in both CDISC SDTM as well as CDISC SEND format. The VICT3R database and platform will focus entirely on control data in SEND.So we will use our existing data warehouse platform an our many years of expertise in large scale data management to optimise and tune the VICT3R/grit42 platform for firstly SEND data and later algorithms for generating the VCGs.4. What excites you most about VICT3R’s potential impact?
It would naturally be very nice if we can help reduce the use of animals in these kinds of studies. The drug safety world is – for good reasons – very conservative. But if we can get the VCG concept accepted and reduce the use, then hopefully over time with more data, more new technologies and more validation we can reduce even more and spread the concept to other domains. As a former medicinal chemist with 15 years in Pharma I also cannot help thinking it will be cool to impact the whole industry and the regulatory processes. Globally.
