New drug-academia deal trains future 'pharma stars.'
company in a unique collaboration, worth £2.5 million (€3.6
million) ensuring drug researchers of the future will be trained in
'magic bullet' drug R&D, which has been hailed as the next
generation of pharmaceutical therapy.
Links between pharmaceutical companies and universities are not unusual, with academic institutions like Bath and Cambridge forming spin off drug companies, which have gone onto great success.
The new centre of excellence is the eighth EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre to be established nationally but is the first one ever to be set up as part of direct collaboration with an industry partner.
"It is particularly pleasing to see AstraZeneca taking the lead as the first pharmaceutical company to collaborate with the EPSRC in supporting this concept," said Dr John Patterson, executive director of Global Drug Development from AstraZeneca.
The agreement is an expansion of an existing collaboration between AstraZeneca's Pharmaceutical and Analytical R&D department and Nottingham University's School of Pharmacy.
Further terms of the agreement will see the School awarded £2.5 million by Astra Zeneca and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for a new centre of excellence in targeted therapeutics.
"The focus of the centre is 'targeted therapeutics' - the science of making medicines that reach the sites in the body where they are most needed, at the right time and in the right dose," said Dr Cameron Alexander, operation director of the new centre.
Targeted therapeutics is the name given to drugs that claim to lessen side effects and provide more effective treatments for patients suffering from a host of illnesses, including cancer, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
The first intake of students will begin their training in October 2006, training 25 of the pharmacy PhD students over the next five years.
EPSRC's first Doctoral Training Centres were launched in 2002 by EPSRC's Life Sciences Interface Programme. They offer a multi-disciplinary approach to postgraduate training bridging the gap between the medical, biological and physical sciences.
"These centres produce a new type of scientist with the skills needed to meet the challenges of interdisciplinary research in strategically important areas," said Professor John O'Reilly, Chief Executive of EPSRC.
"As the first Doctoral Training Centre with an industrial partnership this represents an exciting new development for EPSRC. We very much welcome the support of AstraZeneca."
The future drug treatment market, especially cancer, is likely to be dominated by two main trends: the introduction of drugs with improved efficacy and better tolerability than existing products, and the increased use of combination therapy, involving drugs or procedures with different modes of action to disrupt parts of the disorder's life cycle.
UK companies have approached this problem in several ways, with some harnessing antibodies as a 'magic bullet.'
Current medical practice to treat cancer, for example, usually comprises surgery, supported by chemotherapy and radiotherapy to mop up residual cancer cells. This approach is invasive, aggressive and not wholly effective.
Researchers are confident that the magic bullet approach will prevent side effects caused by toxic compounds attacking healthy cells, allowing sub-optimal treatment levels.
