AstraZeneca signs MIT/Harvard research deal
pharmafile | September 17, 2012 | News story | Business Services, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | AstraZeneca, Deals, Havard, MIT
AstraZeneca has signed a two-year collaboration with an academic institution – affiliated to the illustrious universities MIT and Harvard – in a bid to speed up discovery of antibacterial and antiviral drugs.
The Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will open up its chemical library of 100,000 customised molecules known as Diversity-Oriented Synthesis (DOS) compounds to the manufacturer.
Only two new classes of antibiotics have been brought to market in the past 30 years, and the World Health Organisation says infectious and parasitic diseases are the world’s second-largest leading cause of death and disability.
As antibiotic-resistant superbugs continue to evade existing treatments, the idea of the new deal is to see which of the DOS compounds could have potential for treating bacterial and viral diseases.
The compounds have been designed to contain molecular shapes and structures not found anywhere else and that may therefore have some success getting to the most difficult biological targets.
AstraZeneca and the Broad (as it is known) will pool resources to work on those identified in screening by the latter’s chemical biology platform, with the manufacturer developing and commercialising those which have the best chance.
Biomedical research staff and students from MIT and Harvard will work on this and Manos Perros, head of AstraZeneca’s infection innovative medicines unit, said the collaboration had already identified several new potential projects to pursue.
“The Broad is one of the few places that has made a meaningful investment in new chemistry in the last five years,” said Michael Foley, director of the Broad’s chemical biology platform. “We welcome this remarkable opportunity to harness that investment to improve human health.”
It is the latest in a long line of pharma-academic tie-ups, with AstraZeneca itself unveiling in July a research alliance with four leading academic laboratories to study a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, the apolipoprotein E4 genotype (ApoE).
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was founded in 2003 with a mission to discover the molecular basis of major human diseases and to disseminate its tools, methods and data openly to the scientific community.
Adam Hill
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