AstraZeneca and MRC to create new centre for early drug discovery in Cambridge, UK
UK Centre for Lead Discovery will be located within new AZ R&D site at Cambridge Biomedical Campus
AstraZeneca and the UK's Medical Research Council (MRC) are to create a joint research facility within the pharmaceutical company's new £330m R&D centre in Cambridge, UK, which is under construction.
The AstraZeneca MRC UK Centre for Lead Discovery will be housed within the new AstraZeneca site at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, due to be completed in 2016. MRC and AstraZeneca researchers will work alongside each other.
The collaboration will initially run for five years and the academic researchers will get access to more than two million molecules in AstraZeneca’s library and have the use of high throughput screening equipment at the new site to study diseases and possible treatments.
Their research proposals will be independently assessed by the MRC, which will fund up to 15 screening projects a year and AstraZeneca will have the first option to license any resulting drug discovery programmes.
Menelas Pangalos, Executive Vice President, Innovative Medicines and Early Development at AstraZeneca, said the alliance would further the company's aim of 'creating an innovative and collaborative research environment at its new site in Cambridge' and together the organisations would 'push the boundaries of science to accelerate drug discovery and the development of new medicines here in the UK'.
Professor Sir John Savill, Chief Executive of the MRC, said the agreement 'is an exciting move that will fast-track research that might not otherwise have been carried out, and will ultimately mean better treatments for patients'.
Some initial projects may commence as early as 2015, based at AstraZeneca’s existing research facilities.
