We believe this form of partnership is a model for how academic institutions and industry can work together to deliver better medicines.
- Tony Kouzarides
The Therapeutics Consortium, announced today, will connect the intellectual know-how of several large academic institutions with the drug-developing potential of the pharmaceutical industry, to deliver better drugs to the clinic.
From early 2018, the Consortium will form a major constituent of the new Milner Therapeutics Institute, which has been made possible through a £5 million donation from Jonathan Milner and will be located in a new building at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the centrepiece of the largest biotech cluster outside the United States.
The Consortium will connect academic and clinical researchers at the University of Cambridge, the Babraham Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute with pharmaceutical companies Astex Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). It will provide researchers with the potential to access novel therapeutic agents (including small molecules and antibodies) across the entire portfolio of drugs being developed by each of the companies, in order to investigate their mechanism, efficacy and potential. The terms of the Consortium allow for fast and easy access to these agents and information.
Each industry partner within the Therapeutics Consortium has committed funding to spend on collaborative projects and will collectively fund an executive manager to oversee the academic/industry interactions. Collaborative projects are expected to lead to joint publications, supporting a culture of more open innovation.
Professor Tony Kouzarides from the University of Cambridge, who will head the Therapeutics Consortium and the Milner Institute, is currently deputy director at the Gurdon Institute. He says: “The Milner Institute will act as a ‘match-making’ service through the Therapeutics Consortium, connecting the world-leading research potential of the University of Cambridge and partner institutions with the drug development expertise and resources of the pharmaceutical industry. We hope many more pharmaceutical companies will join our consortium and believe this form of partnership is a model for how academic institutions and industry can work together to deliver better medicines.”
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Image: Lab tubes (cropped)
Credit: Enzymlogic
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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