LifeArc rebrands and sets up £500m research fund
pharmafile | June 15, 2017 | News story | Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | LifeArc, MRC Technology, keytruda
The UK medical research charity formerly known as MRC Technology has rebranded to be known as LifeArc. At the same time, it has announced that it will provide £500 million in funds to support to innovations in antimicrobials, neuroscience, personalised oncology and respiratory medicine.
The charity can afford to provide such a war chest of funding due to significant windfall from its prior work in developing immunotherapy treatment Keytruda. Only last July, it sold a portion of its royalty interest in Keytruda to a private equity fund for $150 million – perhaps a questionable decision given how Keytruda has gone from strength to strength since then.
However, the sale has given the charity plenty of working capital and has allowed it to promise £30 million over four years as part of a seed fund to invest in early stage therapeutic and biologic research and a philanthropic fund to support academic research by medical research charities and organisations.
“The funds build on our history of identifying and supporting early stage scientific discoveries and will form part of the overall life science funding ecosystem to ensure a continuous pipeline of new treatments and diagnostics become available to patients,” Dr John Stageman, Chairman of LifeArc.
The change of name allows the charity to better differentiate itself from the Medical Research Council, from which it was originally formed but now works mostly independently from. The name was put forward to suggest part of the organisation’s purpose – to provide a bridge between the science and bringing that research to patients.
LifeArc, under its previous name of MRC Technology, had played a role in the development of drugs such as, Actemra (Roche, Tysabri (Biogen) and Entyvio (Takeda).
The company has now grown to accommodate 140 members of staff, 80 members of which are involved in academic work on small-molecule and antibody programs. To support its burgeoning growth, the charity has recently moved into new facilities based in Stevenage and Edinburgh – with £10 milion going into the latter site to create a centre of excellence for diagnostic development.
Ben Hargreaves
Related Content
CHMP gives positive opinion for Merck’s KEYTRUDA for unresectable or metastatic urothelial carcinoma
Merck (known as MSD outside of the US and Canada) has announced that its anti-PD-1 …
Merck shares data from phase 3 trial of Keytruda for TNBC treatment
Merck, known as MSD outside of the US and Canada, has announced results from the …
Merck shares data from phase 3 trial of Keytruda for gastric cancers
Merck, known as MSD outside of the US and Canada, has announced data from the …
