P-D-R Blueprint for an Ideal Corporate Information Center

Innovation is fostered by information and knowledge. Information therefore has always been a key competitive asset in any research based corporation and fundamental for decision making on all levels. Hence corporate libraries, managing this key asset, have formed a natural and indispensable function for any R&D driven business and enterprise for many decades. The last 20 years have transformed the information world and libraries have played a very active role in this transition. Following and paralleling the transition of publishers into information solution providers, corporate libraries evolved into information management and knowledge centers. This transition has turned them into innovation partners rather than raw information providers or physical shelving facilities. Especially in the pharmaceutical industry, organizations and functions are constantly adjusting to leverage any financial or competitive advantage. This applies equally to corporate scientific libraries or information cen-ters which, within a technology-enabled landscape and tight resource management, are expected to constantly gain efficiency, and to provide greater value while serving a global community consisting of interdisciplinary multi-site teams. Thus, corporate information centers (this term will be used within this article) are constantly facing reorganization and need to define the functions that are required to fulfil the tasks of fostering innova-tion, enabling access to internal and external knowledge, and integrating content into the workflow of corporate knowledge workers. There are only few publications that deal with life sciences libraries or corporate information centers at all. One, entitled “2015 – The Future of Medical libraries” [1] tried predict what would happen to medical libraries in the post-Google world but did not discuss developments in a corporate setting nor describe the functions needed to have future-proof organisation that helps developing better medicines. Other focus on benchmarking, best practices or needs assessments [2–5]. Therefore, the P-D-R (Pharma Documentation Ring), an organization that represents the scientific informa-tion departments of the leading R&D-based pharmaceutical corporations, worked on a blueprint for an Ideal Corporate Information Center (ICIC), a blueprint that may be used by any company – not only in the pharmaceutical industry. The P-D-R has defined twelve building blocks of which such an ICIC should consist, which are described in the following sections. In the last section, it is discussed how an ICIC could be integrated into the corporation

The positive effects of exercise in chemotherapy-related cardiomyopathy

Anthracyclines such as doxorubicin, daunorubicin, epirubicin, mitoxantrone and idarubicin, are powerful chemotherapeutic drugs used both in children and adult populations. Their properties made them particularly suitable for a large variety of neoplasms including breast adenocarcinoma, small cell lung cancer and acute leukemia. Early and late anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity is a well-known phenomenon, and the incidence of heart failure in patients receiving doxorubicin is 2.2%, with a mortality rate over 60% at 2 years. Prognosis can be improved by prevention, early detection and treatment. A specific treatment for anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity is not yet available, but non-pharmacological measures such as exercise, lifestyle changes and control of risk factors have shown a cardioprotective effect. Exercise training represents a viable non-pharmacological treatment as it increases cardiovascular reserve and endothelial function, regulates proapoptotic signaling, protects against reactive oxygen species (ROS), and decreases autophagy/lysosomal signaling. However, no current guidelines are available for prevention management in cancer patients. Pharmacological measures both for prevention and treatment are those used for heart failure (β-blockers, angiotensin-receptor blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, statins, dexrazoxane and aldosteron antagonists). In this chapter, we will discuss how the evaluation, monitoring and prevention of chemotherapy-related cardiomyopathy is correlated with physical exercise