Pharma input vital to UK research vision
pharmafile | November 21, 2008 | News story | Research and Development |Â Â regÂ
Initiatives to make the UK a world class location for medical research needs significant pharma input to be a success, according to a new report.
The government's Office for Strategic Co-ordination of Health Research (OSCHR) was set up to co-ordinate government, academic and commercial medical research after Sir David Cooksey's review on how to make the UK a world leader in medical research.
The organisation has just published its progress report two years on from Cooksey's vision.
The government says new programmes which will move basic medical research discoveries towards commercialisation and clinical use will benefit NHS patients and the UK economy.
Known as 'translational research' the field is of interest to academics, clinicians and the pharma sector.
One of OSCHR's most important goals is to ensure the different groups are not working in isolation on separate but similar agendas.
OSCHR chairman Professor Sir John Bell said: "Much overlap of remits has been eliminated, there is better co-ordination between funders, and translational science is beginning to receive a large boost from the new programmes and funding."
The government budget for health research stands at £1.7 billion, which is delivered by the Department of Health through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and distributed to the Medical Research Council (MRC) by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills.
The report says that the MRC and NIHR are establishing new interactions with industry in pharma, biotech, devices, diagnostics, informatics and services.
Schemes already set up include the MRC Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme (DPFS), designed to invest in projects that target significant and unmet health needs.
Launched in April, it received more than 70 outline proposals in therapy areas such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, glaucoma, scarring, fracture and wound repair.
These included pharma projects suggesting work on new chemical entities and new indications. Others included biological, immune, surgical and psychological interventions.
The MRC expects to invest £130 million by 2010-11 in priority areas agreed with OSCHR.
It has already awarded £7 million of funding to researchers in a programme aimed at providing new insights into disease processes and fostering early exploratory trials involving the pharma and biotech industry of new and promising treatments.
The report also mentions that OSCHR is talking to pharma companies and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on issues of late-stage drug development.
Cooksey proposed the development of a process for conditional licensing to allow earlier access to medicines, but this would need EU agreement.
Collaboration between government and the pharma sector already exists.
For example, Scotland's Chief Scientist Office recently worked with Scottish Enterprise to forge an alliance between Wyeth and four University/NHS Health Board partnerships. Together they have formed the £50 million Translational Medicine Research Collaboration which has embarked on a programme of biomarker discovery.
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