The Clock is Ticking - a blogpost by ESR7 Vincenzo Di Lorenzo

​On 27th February- 1st March 2024 we ESRs had the great chance to get trained through the 3rd ALLODD Training School in the J&J campus in Beerse, Belgium “IPR Training for Researchers & ESR Presentations on the Progress of their Research”. 

It was a great opportunity to get in touch with the industrial world once again and experience also the personal stories of some of the speakers alongside training and information. It has been very interesting to get to know how the “big pharma” is trying to support innovation through several partnerships and founding even physical ones like the JLABS and get in line with the new guidelines like the project for the reduction of emission which Johnson will try to reach in 2026. Having a geothermal power plant within a campus is surely quite impressive!

Also, the attention to animal health care, it’s something I am sure people are expecting to see more and more applied and this is also a great achievement. Because if it is true that (unfortunately I would say!) they are still required, it is also true that our efforts can be applied even more in this sense, after all (trying to relieve pain isn’t what we should be trying to focus on?) I just hope we will see more and more of this in future and worldwide!

Alongside this, we had the opportunity to get in touch with very interesting talks like intellectual property and Project management and partnerships on the first day and scientific ones on Car-T cells therapy, PROTACs and the kinases. In sum a well-compelled series of talks ranging from biology to chemistry, medicinal chemistry and more! 

But this was not all, on the third day we had to practice (and I would dare to say re-learn!) how to introduce ourselves rapidly but exhaustively in a 4 and then in 1-minute pitches trying to catch as much as possible, which is surely not an easy task! Yet it is interesting to get a little detached from our daily way of expressing ourselves within the scientific community and get more to the general public. After all, as George Orwell has greatly shown in 1984 behind simplification there can be a huge work, but I would add sometimes this can also be very beneficial! 

All this simplification process is in fact one of the basic sets for effective communication in which a key role is also relying on intonations, gestures, and looks and is always very important to keep in mind!
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We cannot be thankful enough to ALLODD and Janssen Pharmaceutical for this experience and further opportunity and as learned from hearing the story of Janssen himself, proceed even with more enthusiasm cause the clock is ticking and “patients are waiting”. And after all, we are scientists, and we hope to give our contribution also to help!