Daiichi Sankyo And MRC Technology Partner To ID New Drug Targets
Non-profit technology transfer organization MRC Technology announced that it has entered into a drug discovery partnership with global pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo.
The partnership will center on the recognition and selection of new drug targets with potential to be used as therapeutics for oncology, metabolic, and cardiovascular diseases. MRC Technology will supply Daiichi Sankyo details of possible drug targets sourced from academia under the terms of the agreement. The organization will also be responsible for screening, hit validation, and future optimization of chosen targets. The company in turn will have the option to work with MRC Technology as part of a collaborative project team.
Justin Bryans, MRC Technology’s Director of Drug Discovery, said, “Our aim is to translate early stage academic research into new therapeutic opportunities. Collaborating with Daiichi Sankyo early in this process means we can tap into their wealth of drug discovery experience with the view to generating novel chemical entities faster.”
The collaboration will leverage Daiichi Sankyo’s expertise in drug discovery and development together with MRC Technology’s broad knowledge of targets and disease biology. These are mainly made available in academia and will be provided by MRC Technology’s Centre for Therapeutics Discovery. The organization’s research partners include the University of Aberdeen, Chinese Academy of Sciences, The Association of International Cancer Research, King’s College London, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine among others.
MRC Technology also has partnerships with Novo Nordisk, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Pfizer, along with other industry leaders. As an independent life science technology transfer charity, the organization works with academia, charity, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical sectors around the world. Daiichi Sankyo and Brussels-based UCB were among the latest partners to sign a collaboration agreement with MRC Technology.
Summit Pharmaceuticals International (SPI), MRC Technology’s agent in Japan, facilitated the partnership agreement with Daiichi Sankyo. No financial terms and target information have been disclosed by either organization.