Science Minster highlights MRC’s pioneering academic-industry collaborations in Inflammatory and Immune diseases
Monday 25 October, 2010
Science Minister David Willetts today highlighted plans by the Medical Research Council (MRC) to invest more than £10million in a unique collaboration between industry and academia. The investment will establish two new research consortia and fund additional research into inflammatory and immune diseases.
Together with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), the MRC housed a series of workshops with leaders in the field of respiratory and inflammatory joint disease from both the pharmaceutical industry and universities. The purpose was to bring together the brightest minds from both backgrounds, to identify the challenges to research and work together to address them.
The MRC Strategy Board has agreed to invest £10m in two consortia arising from these workshops that will undertake early pre-competitive quality research to identify potential new drugs and treatments which can ultimately be tailored to individual patient needs. The consortia will push to progress not only the underlying science but also new potential treatments in both areas of disease. The next stage is to work-up and agree the detail of both consortia and the research objectives.
Sir John Savill, CEO for the MRC, said:
“This is an exciting new way of working between the MRC and industry to accelerate research discoveries and bring these from laboratory bench to patient bedside more quickly. The MRC/ABPI Inflammation and Immunology Initiative fits hand in glove with the Therapeutic Capability Clusters programme and will focus on complementary research areas, it is similarly well aligned with the recently announced Technology Strategy Board Stratified Medicines Initiative to which the MRC has contributed £1.5m.”
Dr Richard Barker, Director General of the ABPI said:
“We are delighted to partner with the MRC in tackling illnesses such as inflammatory lung disease which causes thousands of premature deaths every year. This is good news for the NHS patients of the future."
The MRC/ABPI Inflammation and Immunology Initiative was highlighted at the joint ABPI / BIA conference, entitled “Our Vision for a New Decade,” held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London today.
