The consortium will connect the intellectual know-how of Cambridge researchers with the drug-developing potential of the pharmaceutical industry, to deliver better drugs to the clinic
The consortium will connect Cambridge researchers with the pharmaceutical industry
It will be developing and studying precision medicines for some of the most globally devastating diseases.
From early 2018, the consortium will form a major constituent of the new Milner Therapeutics Institute.
One of the major aims of the Milner Institute will be to help understand how drugs work and to push forward new ideas and technologies to improve the development of novel therapies. A major, but not exclusive, focus of the Institute will be cancer.
This institute 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 Therapeutics Consortium, within the Milner Institute, will connect academic and clinical researchers at the University of Cambridge.
It will provide them with the potential to access novel therapeutic agents across the entire portfolio of drugs being developed by each of the companies, in order to investigate their mechanism, efficacy and potential.
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.
Professor Michael Wakelam, director of the Babraham Institute, said: “The Institute’s participation in the Therapeutics Consortium provides yet one more channel by which our excellence in basic biological research is built upon in partnership with industry-based collaborators.
“We know from experience that bringing together the best academics and the best pharmacological research is both efficient and enlightening and we look forward to making joint progress.”
Dr Rab Prinjha, head of GSK’s Epigenetics Discovery Performance Unit, said: “Late-stage attrition is too high – very few investigational medicines entering human trials eventually become an approved treatment.
“As an industry, we must improve our success rate by understanding our molecules and targets better.
“This innovative institute which builds on GSK’s very successful collaboration with the Gurdon Institute and close links with many groups across Cambridge, aims to increase our knowledge of basic biological mechanisms to help us bring the right investigational medicines into human trials and ultimately to patients.”
The consortium will initially operate from the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, but will move into the Milner Institute in early 2018.