October 20, 2020
While still in Luxembourg and noticing many similarities to our time in Switzerland, we met with Anna Chioti, Head of Pharmacy and Medicines at Luxembourg Health Directorate — Direction de la Santé, who confirmed similarities between the two wealthy countries’ healthcare systems. Her description of the principality’s work toward a centralized, digitized healthcare system — capturing all of a patient’s interactions with the system, from doctor visits and hospitalizations through prescription adherence — sounded like the kind of distant fantasy we have in the United States about the promise of personalized medicine. Anna was something of the trip’s unicorn, with experience in R&D, as an innovator, on the commercial side, and now public service.
Our next meeting was with Jens Schwamborn of Organo Therapeutics, who told us about the company’s cutting- edge work on minibrains exploring therapies for Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Next we met with Marc Jacobs — an engineer, not the designer — from Molecular Plasma Group (MPG), in the Technoport Hall innovator hub in Foetz, where MPG has their facility. Marc explained how the company uses plasma to coat objects, including automobile parts and now face masks, and even exploring ways to use polymers to coat APIs.
We then hit the road to reach our final destination, Paris, France. We arrived late that night in heavy rain (no surprise), when the city’s curfew was in effect, with some trepidation that we would not be allowed into the city but were surprised to see it more bustling than any other metropolis we had visited, with a lot of people on the street without masks. Exhausted from the day, we found a lousy hotel and settled in.
THE TEAM MET WITH:
Dr. Anna Chioti, Luxembourg Health Directorate – Direction de la Santé; Dr. Jens Schwamborn, Organo Therapeutics; Marc Jacobs, Molecular Plasma Group (MPG)
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