Academic Advances: Universities Partnering with Others to Spur the Research Enterprise
UCSF-Pfizer Partnership Yields Projects Aimed at Clinical Trials
An 11-month-old partnership between the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Pfizer, Inc., aimed at rapidly moving new therapies into human clinical trials, has selected its first projects for funding and joint development. Teams from the university and Pfizer will work together on experimental therapies developed by UCSF scientists with a goal of testing them in people with five hard-to-treat, often deadly conditions, including lung and prostate cancer.
Three to five additional projects from university researchers will be selected after evaluation of a second round of proposals that were due in early November.
As part of the collaboration, Pfizer will not only provide funding for the selected researchers, but has set up its own laboratory space next to UCSF's Mission Bay campus. Scientists at the Pfizer lab, known as the Center for Therapeutic Innovation, will work directly with each of the UCSF teams.
The Pfizer and UCSF researchers can visit each other's labs, conduct experiments together, and participate in joint team meetings, said Stephanie Robertson, PhD, who oversees the collaboration for the UCSF Office of Innovation, Technologies, and Alliances (ITA) with colleague Tuhin Sinha, PhD, alliance manager of the ITA.
As the cost of developing new drugs has skyrocketed—reaching $1.8 billion per approved drug, according to some recent research—drug companies have been searching for ways to lower the cost. Since companies often spend years or months developing and testing tools geared to the biology of interest within particular drug pipelines, the UCSF-Pfizer collaboration offers a way to jump-start that process by linking company-based experts with academic researchers who know the biology and have already developed the tools.
Pfizer will have the right to commercialize the drugs and UCSF will earn milestone payments as the therapies advance through different stages of testing, as well as royalties from sales of approved therapies. This collaborative structure also provides the university the potential for a bigger return than it would normally receive when licensing out an early-stage technology.
"Best of all, it allows the scientists to be involved in turning research they've worked on for years into something that could actually be used to treat patients," Robertson said.
One of the joint teams is developing a cancer treatment aimed initially at lung tumors and based on research that has identified an enzyme found at high levels in lung and other types of cancer. The team hopes to be able to start early human trials in as little as three or four years.
A new approach to treating prostate cancer may be ready for human testing even sooner—in as little as 36 months.
The initial five projects were selected from 32 submissions by a steering committee composed of eight scientists—half from Pfizer and half from UCSF. Committee members sat for two days as a jury, first reviewing preliminary outlines and later hearing full proposals on the projects judged most promising. The steering committee operated by consensus, having to fully agree on which projects to fund.
In addition to the lung and prostate cancer efforts, three other projects were selected concerning a treatment for a clotting disorder known as thrombosis; a therapy for the liver disease known as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis; and therapies for pulmonary fibrosis.
Source: EurekAlert! 10/26/11
UCSF-Pfizer Partnership Yields Projects Aimed at Clinical Trials
An 11-month-old partnership between the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Pfizer, Inc., aimed at rapidly moving new therapies into human clinical trials, has selected its first projects for funding and joint development. Teams from the university and Pfizer will work together on experimental therapies developed by UCSF scientists with a goal of testing them in people with five hard-to-treat, often deadly conditions, including lung and prostate cancer.
Three to five additional projects from university researchers will be selected after evaluation of a second round of proposals that were due in early November.
As part of the collaboration, Pfizer will not only provide funding for the selected researchers, but has set up its own laboratory space next to UCSF's Mission Bay campus. Scientists at the Pfizer lab, known as the Center for Therapeutic Innovation, will work directly with each of the UCSF teams.
The Pfizer and UCSF researchers can visit each other's labs, conduct experiments together, and participate in joint team meetings, said Stephanie Robertson, PhD, who oversees the collaboration for the UCSF Office of Innovation, Technologies, and Alliances (ITA) with colleague Tuhin Sinha, PhD, alliance manager of the ITA.
As the cost of developing new drugs has skyrocketed—reaching $1.8 billion per approved drug, according to some recent research—drug companies have been searching for ways to lower the cost. Since companies often spend years or months developing and testing tools geared to the biology of interest within particular drug pipelines, the UCSF-Pfizer collaboration offers a way to jump-start that process by linking company-based experts with academic researchers who know the biology and have already developed the tools.
Pfizer will have the right to commercialize the drugs and UCSF will earn milestone payments as the therapies advance through different stages of testing, as well as royalties from sales of approved therapies. This collaborative structure also provides the university the potential for a bigger return than it would normally receive when licensing out an early-stage technology.
"Best of all, it allows the scientists to be involved in turning research they've worked on for years into something that could actually be used to treat patients," Robertson said.
One of the joint teams is developing a cancer treatment aimed initially at lung tumors and based on research that has identified an enzyme found at high levels in lung and other types of cancer. The team hopes to be able to start early human trials in as little as three or four years.
A new approach to treating prostate cancer may be ready for human testing even sooner—in as little as 36 months.
The initial five projects were selected from 32 submissions by a steering committee composed of eight scientists—half from Pfizer and half from UCSF. Committee members sat for two days as a jury, first reviewing preliminary outlines and later hearing full proposals on the projects judged most promising. The steering committee operated by consensus, having to fully agree on which projects to fund.
In addition to the lung and prostate cancer efforts, three other projects were selected concerning a treatment for a clotting disorder known as thrombosis; a therapy for the liver disease known as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis; and therapies for pulmonary fibrosis.
Source: EurekAlert! 10/26/11
