The European project RePo-SUDOE (Drug Repurposing for the Effective and Accelerated Development of Medicines in the SUDOE Region) continues its outreach activities in schools to introduce bioinformatics and drug repurposing to secondary and baccalaureate students in bioscience tracks.
The sessions were delivered by the CITIC group (Centro de Investigación TIC of the University of A Coruña), a partner of the project consortium, at Corazón de María School (CODEMA) and Sagrados Corazones School, involving 98 students.
At CODEMA, 60 students from 4th year secondary education and 1st year baccalaureate participated. At Sagrados Corazones, 38 students from 1st year baccalaureate took part in two groups.
The sessions introduced drug repurposing as a research strategy aimed at identifying new therapeutic uses for existing drugs, a core line within RePo-SUDOE. Basic bioinformatics concepts applied to biomedical data analysis were also presented.
Tools developed within the project, such as Repo-bot and the RePo-VRE virtual environment, were showcased to support data access and collaborative research. The interdisciplinary nature of the field, involving chemistry, biology and computer science, was also highlighted.