Bayer partners with US academics

pharmafile | September 13, 2013 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing |  Bayer, Cancer, broad, oncology 

Bayer HealthCare and a prestigious US academic institution have signed a five-year deal to find new oncology treatments.

The German company is partnering with the Broad Institute, which is affiliated to US universities MIT and Harvard, in a bid to discover ways of targeting cancer genome alterations.

They will focus on oncogenomics – part of Broad’s expertise – an area of research that identifies and characterises cancer genes, finds new ones which in a modified form either stimulate tumour cell growth (called oncogenes) or lose their ability to do so (tumour suppressor genes).

The hope is that looking at individual tumour mutations will help in the wider goal of providing personalised medicine, offering more accurate diagnosis and predictions of clinical outcomes.

While no financial details of the transaction have been revealed, it is known that rights to research findings will be shared and Bayer will have the option for an exclusive license for compounds at preclinical development stage.

The emphasis is on joint working, with both parties using their compound libraries and screening platforms to advance projects, with steering committees guiding where the research goes.

“The Broad Institute’s scientists have created impressive systematic catalogues of mutational changes across different types of tumours, laying a foundation for the development of new cancer therapies and diagnostics,” said Andreas Busch, Bayer’s head of global drug discovery.

“The alliance is another significant step underlining our engagement in the field of oncology and personalised medicine,” he added.

Broad’s director Eric Lander praised Bayer’s “decades of experience in pharmaceutical development” and the institute has strong links to pharma.

A year ago it signed a two-year deal with AstraZeneca, allowing the manufacturer access to a chemical library of 100,000 customised molecules known as Diversity-Oriented Synthesis (DOS) compounds, with a view to finding treatments for bacterial and viral diseases.

Broad was launched in 2004 as a non-profit biomedical research facility and has collaborations with more than 100 private firms and public bodies in 40 countries.

Adam Hill