Treeway is melting the Ice Buckets!

“A big data approach can lead to undiscovered insights and will help us further in building a world-wide ALS community and develop therapies to cure ALS”, says entrepreneur and ALS patient Bernard Muller. Bernard is one of the founders of Treeway, a biotechnology company which he started in 2012 with entrepreneur and also ALS patient Robbert Jan Stuit.  “We are pioneering new avenues on research, drug development and care with a focus on patient involvement". 

What’s the challenge?
On June 21st (int. ALS day) we start with a 11-week summer challenge for 8 talented Master and PhD students in the field of Biology, Pharmacy, Medicine, Bio Informatics, Chemistry and Mathematics. In a team they will work with big data and try to develop physiologically-based ALS models. During this challenge we offer them research in several distinctive areas in science. To meet our challenge we have one goal! What is in the data? The selected students will travel all over the world to meet academic health and business professionals and apply big data analytics to analyse these data in order to obtain a deeper understanding of ALS disease progression and it will be a valuable tool in developing innovative clinical trails.  These data will be donated by sponsors, research centres, non-profit organisations and public sources. Donated data can be for example: (anonymous) clinical (trial) data, epidemiological data, pharmacy data and registry data. Public data can be the pro-act database, published and public available data via internet from patients.  
 
Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
This challenge is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for talented master/Phd students to develop skills like leadership, team working and personal effectiveness. But besides that, it will be an extraordinary way of applying their knowledge and creativity to help increase the social impact of a devastating disease.  During the last week of the challenge the students will present their results in an unconventional way.  The challenge will be finished by attending the Amsterdam City Swim on September 6th 2015. 

Look for more information on: www.treeway.nl or send a mail to twschallenge@treeway.nl