{"id":10699,"date":"2025-12-17T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T08:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.proanima.fr\/interview\/dr-marco-straccia\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T09:07:35","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T08:07:35","slug":"dr-marco-straccia","status":"publish","type":"interview","link":"https:\/\/www.proanima.fr\/en\/interview\/dr-marco-straccia\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Marco Straccia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pro Anima scientific Committee:<\/strong> As a co-founder of the consulting agency FRESCI that foster the power of scientific research and innovation, and accelerate the change towards the adoption of more human-relevant methods in biomedical research and to better assess chemical risk, can you introduce your background to our readers and explain what brought you to create FRESCI?<\/p>\n

Dr Marco Straccia:<\/strong> Everyone has a sick friend or family member and most of us will get sick sooner or later. Healthy aging is still a privilege for few. That has been the reality around me since a young age. Already at high-school, I decided to focus on biomedical research with the clear focus of accelerating the process of generating therapeutic solutions to help patients with no treatment options hope and poor quality of life. As soon as I started working in a lab, I\u2019ve been trained as a neuroscientist and I\u2019ve been working on several neurodegenerative diseases from the Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Glioblastoma, Alzheimer\u2019s and Huntington\u2019s Disease, and neuroinflammation in general. To study pathophysiological features of these diseases and test therapeutic strategies from small molecules to cell therapy. I\u2019ve been using several models like cell-free assays, rodent models, primary cultures, cell lines and diverse human stem cells, and human tissues in several experimental paradigms and different research groups in the EU.<\/p>\n

During my last post-doc contract, I\u2019ve seen how the bench science, when done correctly, can really generate new solutions and therapeutic hopes for people. However I was frustrated about the inefficiency of the system in many steps of the value chain. The academia has a lot of high state of the art knowledge, but it mostly lacks the two main skills: 1) there\u2019s a lack understanding what is really needed outside the academia (we see know more patient associations and pharmas interaction with academic researchers, but it\u2019s still not sufficient); 2) there\u2019s a general lack of skills of transferring highly valuable scientific knowledge in a well-characterised proof-of-concept that can easily been uptaken by the actors outside the academia (industries, policy makers, regulators, etc.)<\/p>\n

So I decided to help in this bridging activity. I soon realise that as scientist it was not sufficient my background as scientist to face such challenge, and this is why I went through a MBA to acquire the knowledge of how the world outside the academia is working, and I deliberately chosen a general MBA not focused in science to clearly understand how other industries have solved similar challenges, from automotion to construction and many others. I strongly believe in cross-contamination and in being out of our comfort zone.<\/p>\n

This experience made me understand that taking a solution from a lab bench to the patients requires many more skills than just robust science (which is a must) and also it requires many more people than scientists to make things happen. This is when FRESCI started flourishing by adding people with a diverse set of skills to tackle as many variables are present, but with a common mission.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Pro Anima scientific Committee: What links does FRESCI specifically forge with the European Commission, especially the institutions involved in the transition towards more relevant, animal-free innovations and science, such as the Joint Research Center, the ECVAM, as well as the regulatory agencies (ECHA, EMA, EFSA)? What came or will come out of it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Marco Straccia: <\/strong>At FRESCI, we really work at the interface between science and policy across the European ecosystem. Our collaboration with the Commission and the different EU agencies isn\u2019t about lobbying or informal advocacy, it\u2019s about participating in clear, transparent processes that help make innovation more human-relevant and effective.<\/p>\n

We try to connect what\u2019s happening on the ground, in laboratories, startups, and research projects, with what\u2019s being discussed at the policy and regulatory levels. In other words, we bridge the different layers of the system, from the very technical to the strategic, to help decision-makers see the full picture of what\u2019s actually moving in the field and provide practical tools to enable a faster use of human biology based models for human health, from safety assessment applications to their use for boosting the translational power of therapies under development.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In practical terms, we work through tenders and we support and assist the EC work in the field of 3R and initiatives that map and operationalise human biology\u2009\u2013\u2009based models. Most of the work we carry out for the European Commission is publicly available, like the biomedical reviews on four disease areas, policy reports, and the very soon available BimmoH.<\/p>\n

So in essence, our role is to connect the dots, helping the transition toward more relevant, human-based science become something concrete, coordinated, and actionable.<\/p>\n

We really like to help to get things done.<\/p>\n

We bridge the different layers of the system, from the very technical to the strategic, to help decision-makers see the full picture of what\u2019s actually moving in the field and provide practical tools to enable a faster use of human biology based models for human health, from safety assessment applications to their use for boosting the translational power of therapies under development.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Pro Anima scientific Committee: A couple of weeks ago, FRESCI delivered BimmoH, the largest, highly curated, AI-powered database of human biology-based models to the EC-JRC. This is the first-of-its-kind worldwide. Can you tell us more about this platform, why and how it came to life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Marco Straccia: <\/strong>BimmoH is the first public, largest, continuously updated, and highly curated knowledge database of human biology\u2009\u2013\u2009based experimental models. Powered by interpretable AI and machine learning, it is designed to structure and consolidate information about models that support biomedical research.<\/p>\n

It was born out of a very practical need, to address three pain points our ecosystem kept encountering again and again.<\/p>\n