Date: 2013-04-10
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: novel cancer immunotherapies
Company: Bayer (Germany) German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) (Germany)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: R&D
Action mechanism:
Disease:
Details: Bayer HealthCare and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) will extend their successful strategic research alliance in search of novel cancer therapeutics by focusing their activities also on the field of immunotherapy. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center and Bayer will work together in a joint laboratory located at the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) in Heidelberg to develop novel immunotherapies. The joint laboratory will accommodate up to twelve staff, and first projects are expected to start in the middle of this year. The partners will invest together up to €3 million per year under the expanded alliance. The partners will build on established structures of their existing collaboration including joint review processes of individual projects and resource allocations. The rights to the research findings are shared equally between the partners.
\"The goal of one of our joint projects is to look for immunosuppressive molecules on the surface of tumor cells. In a next step we want to block them with antibodies and thereby activate the specific immune response against the tumor cells\", explains Professor Dr. Philipp Beckhove, Head of Translational Immunology at the DKFZ. \"The new joint laboratory allows us to closely and continuously collaborate with the colleagues from Bayer and, thus, will support the faster translation of concepts from the lab into clinical trials.\"
The partners can already look back on more than four successful years of collaborative work. Twenty-two projects have been initiated so far, and some of these have already reached important milestones and moved on to the next phase of drug development namely compound screening for new potential drug candidates. Up to now, the two partners have invested more than €10 million in their ongoing joint research since end of 2008.
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