Corrigendum: Core competencies for pharmaceutical physicians and drug development scientists.

[This corrects the article on p. 105 in vol. 4, PMID: 23986704.].

Core competencies for pharmaceutical physicians and drug development scientists.

Professional groups, such as IFAPP (International Federation of Pharmaceutical Physicians and Pharmaceutical Medicine), are expected to produce the defined core competencies to orient the discipline and the academic programs for the development of future competent professionals and to advance the profession. On the other hand, PharmaTrain, an Innovative Medicines Initiative project, has become the largest public-private partnership in biomedicine in the European Continent and aims to provide postgraduate courses that are designed to meet the needs of professionals working in medicines development. A working group was formed within IFAPP including representatives from PharmaTrain, academic institutions and national member associations, with special interest and experience on Quality Improvement through education. The objectives were: to define a set of core competencies for pharmaceutical physicians and drug development scientists, to be summarized in a Statement of Competence and to benchmark and align these identified core competencies with the Learning Outcomes (LO) of the PharmaTrain Base Course. The objectives were successfully achieved. Seven domains and 60 core competencies were identified and aligned accordingly. The effective implementation of training programs using the competencies or the PharmaTrain LO anywhere in the world may transform the drug development process to an efficient and integrated process for better and safer medicines. The PharmaTrain Base Course might provide the cognitive framework to achieve the desired Statement of Competence for Pharmaceutical Physicians and Drug Development Scientists worldwide.

European initiative towards quality standards in education and training for discovery, development and use of medicines.

This position paper recommends a set of standards for quality assessment of continuing professional development (CPD) for medicines research and development (R&D). We have developed these standards to help us achieve the education and training goals of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI; www.imi.europa.eu/), which is developing courses to address the skills gaps in European medicines R&D. The IMI shared standard for course quality will enable professionals in medicines R&D to create a personalized portfolio of education and training that best suits their needs. Individuals already working in the pharmaceutical industry will be able to select modules for study on an as-needs basis, which may be combined to gain a qualification that is recognized throughout Europe. By seeking input from the medicines R&D community, especially professional bodies involved in the career development of biomedical scientists, we hope to initiate the creation of a mutually recognized framework for lifelong learning in medicines R&D. The shared standards call for defined and transparent admission criteria, a predefined set of teaching objectives leading to defined learning outcomes, assessment of the students' achievement, a system for collecting, assessing and addressing feedback, and provision of appropriate and updated reference material. This framework will make it easier for professionals to develop the skills required by industry, and easier for employers to recognize professionals with appropriate skills. It will obviate some of the need for retraining personnel who have already developed appropriate skills in a different setting, thereby saving the industry additional effort. Fulfilment of quality standards by course providers will be made transparent within the IMI's catalogue of courses, on-course (www.on-course.eu), which will be made publicly available during 2012.

The preeminence of clusters.

Many cities and countries still view the foundation of a biotech sector as desirable for a high-tech, intellectually driven economy. But a discussion by seasoned biotech management and investors suggests that attaining an environment with the right mix of money, management and innovation remains a difficult and long-term challenge.

Solar wind neon from Genesis: implications for the lunar noble gas record.

Lunar soils have been thought to contain two solar noble gas components with distinct isotopic composition. One has been identified as implanted solar wind, the other as higher-energy solar particles. The latter was puzzling because its relative amounts were much too large compared with present-day fluxes, suggesting periodic, very high solar activity in the past. Here we show that the depth-dependent isotopic composition of neon in a metallic glass exposed on NASA's Genesis mission agrees with the expected depth profile for solar wind neon with uniform isotopic composition. Our results strongly indicate that no extra high-energy component is required and that the solar neon isotope composition of lunar samples can be explained as implantation-fractionated solar wind.