AstraZeneca and Uni of Manchester team up for personalised cancer treatment

AstraZeneca has signed a five-year £11.5 million clinical trial agreement with the University of Manchester for personalised cancer treatment

The two organisations will apply clinical trial bioinformatics to better identify the right cancer treatment for the right patient at the right time, they said in a joint statement.

The collaboration includes the development of a new bioinformatics system to capture and integrate clinical trial safety, efficacy, biomarker and drug distribution data in real time.

Mene Pangalos, executive vice president, said: “This collaboration is exciting because it will eventually allow us to incorporate important data from clinical trials into a format that can be reviewed in real time by healthcare professionals and matched with information about cancer medicines.

“We will be able to modify clinical trial programmes accordingly and support clinicians to offer more accurate, personalised and rapid decision making to patients about their treatment.”

Professor of experimental cancer medicine, Andrew Hughes, from the University’s institute of cancer sciences, said: “Patient insight is key to our understanding of new cancer drugs.

“AstraZeneca has long supported the UK science base and this latest collaboration with the Manchester Cancer Research Centre will enable the patients to share their insights with investigators and sponsors more effectively and efficiently than today, enabling a more informed assessment.”

The agreement is a step further on existing medical collaborations between AstraZeneca and the University of Manchester, ranging from research into novel cancer medicines to progressing treatments for lung cancer, advancing inflammatory research and developing new drug delivery systems.