AstraZeneca and Glaxo to invest £10M in joint university research centre

AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline are to jointly create a research centre at Manchester University devoted to inflammatory diseases, with the two pharma companies putting in £5 million each over the next three years.

This will help the university to align some of its basic biomedical research more closely with the need to find new treatments for chronic diseases, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and rheumatoid arthritis, according to Ian Jacobs, dean of the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences at Manchester. The collaboration, “Will bring together expertise in biomedical research from the university and the resources and drug discovery expertise from GSK and AstraZeneca to create true partnership and synergy,” Jacobs said.

The Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research will be recruiting scientists who will direct the research in line with strategic priorities set out jointly by the three partners, with the aim of translating the research through to new treatments.

The creation of the centre is “indicative of a new era of pre-competitive sharing” within the pharma sector, and with academic scientists,” said Menelas Pangalos, Executive vice president of Innovative Medicines at AstraZeneca.

Dave Allen, senior vice president of Respiratory Research at GSK said the formation of the centre “improves our chances” of translating basic research findings through to new drugs.

Manchester University has previously collaborated separately with both companies, signing a formal agreement with AstraZeneca in July 2006, to carry out joint research in diseases including cancer, diabetes and obesity. Under the agreement the two partners have exchanged staff and shared facilities. Beyond drug discovery the collaboration also works on enabling technologies including imaging, bioinformatics and synthetic chemistry.

This 2006 agreement formalised the university’s already close relationship with AstraZeneca, whose largest R&D centre is situated close to Manchester University, at Alderley Park in Cheshire.

Two years later, GSK and Manchester University sealed their research alliance in July 2008, setting out how scientists would work together to identify new research avenues, collaborate in a variety of disease areas and support drug discovery. This collaboration focuses on research methodologies such as systems biology and biomedical imaging, and on respiratory disease and inflammation processes.