Date: 2014-07-21
Type of information: Collaboration agreement
Compound:
Company: Medical Research Council (MRC), AstraZeneca (UK), GSK (UK), Janssen Research & Development, Janssen Research & Development, a J&J company (USA -NJ), Eli Lilly (USA- IN), Pfizer (USA - NY), Takeda (Japan), UCB (Belgium)
Therapeutic area:
Type agreement: collaboration
Action mechanism:
Disease:
Details: * On July 21, 2014, the Medical Research Council (MRC) announced that UK researchers will be granted access to a ‘virtual library’ of deprioritised pharmaceutical compounds through a new partnership with seven global drug companies. AstraZeneca, GSK, Janssen Research & Development, Lilly, Pfizer, Takeda and UCB will each offer up a number of their deprioritised molecules for use in new studies to improve our understanding of a range of diseases, with a view to developing more effective treatments. The compounds have undergone some degree of industry development, but have all stalled at some point in early testing – often because they are not sufficiently effective against the disease in question. However, they may still be useful against other diseases with shared biological pathways.
Projects funded through a previous compound sharing initiative between the MRC and AstraZeneca are already demonstrating success in this area, with the first human trials of a new treatment for chronic cough getting underway (see case study below).
A full list of available compounds will be published later this year, when UK scientists will be able to apply for MRC funding to use them in academic research projects. There is no fixed budget for the programme, which will make the compounds available on a continuous basis via the MRC’s normal response-mode funding mechanism. It is hoped that more companies, and more compounds, will be added as the scheme progresses.
Research proposals will be submitted to the MRC, which will independently judge the scientific quality of the applications and award funding accordingly. The rights to intellectual property (IP) generated using the compounds will vary from project to project, but will be equitable and similar to those currently used in academically-led research.
Financial terms:
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