Dr Andy Blanchard
Director of external discovery at GlaxoSmithKline.
Dr Andy Blanchard is working with scientists at the University of Nottingham and Queen Mary, University of London to evaluate a potential biomarker of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis that could lead to better diagnosis and treatment of the disease. The MRC is funding the research through an MRC Industry Collaboration Award (MICA).
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is diagnosed in around 4,500 people in the UK every year. About half of those people die within three years as a result. Currently there is no treatment for the disease and no way of predicting how quickly it will progress in individual patients.
A collaboration between academic and industry scientists is focusing on a molecule called αvβ6 integrin, which might produce a sea change in the hunt for new treatments for pulmonary fibrosis. Integrins are involved in signalling between cells and their environment: such interactions between surface integrins and the extracellular matrix provide key signals determining cell fate. αvβ6 integrin is implicated in the pathology of various conditions such as cancer, chronic wounds and fibrosis, and as such is a potential target for treating these diseases.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL) have come together to assess whether expression of αvβ6 integrin in the lungs can be used to measure the extent of pulmonary fibrosis and as a measure of disease progression in an animal model of lung fibrosis. Ultimately this could lead to new and improved ways of assessing the effectiveness of potential new drugs in treating patients.
Dr Andy Blanchard, director of external discovery at GSK, says:
“Biomarkers that predict efficacy mean we can get better information from shorter clinical trials. Because they are shorter and less expensive, we are able to run more trials, which means we can test more candidate drugs at different doses and be sure we will find the best option for patients as quickly as possible.”
Dr Blanchard is working with Dr Gisli Jenkins at Nottingham and Dr John Marshall at QMUL, funded by GSK and an MRC Industry Collaboration Award (MICA).
“We all believe in this integrin as a target but each of us has only one piece of the jigsaw,” he says. “Nottingham has strong clinical links – they have the patients who need treating – but also an academic interest in integrins and their role in pulmonary fibrosis. They have animal models and imaging capacity but no drug discovery capability. At GSK, we have a wealth of experience in preclinical and clinical development of new drugs.
“At QMUL, Dr Marshall has the missing link: a labelled peptide that targets αvβ6. Putting all our expertise together, we can use the peptide to label αvβ6, visualise it using imaging technology and measure how it relates to progression of fibrosis in our model, as well as monitoring in vivo the effect of novel inhibitors of fibrosis on disease progression.”
Dr Blanchard says collaboration between private and academic sectors is the future of the pharmaceutical industry as companies acknowledge how important it is to augment existing expertise in-house with scientific excellence externally. “MICA is a tremendous initiative,” he says. “It will accelerate the development of new drugs to meet clinical needs – and it’s helping do that without lots of bureaucracy. The form was just three or four pages, relatively straightforward, clearly defining the roles and the IP situation for the academics and the company. It’s been a very positive experience.”
Published September 2011