In February 2010, CRT announced its first major alliance with a biopharmaceutical, AstraZeneca. This is a three-year multi-project strategic alliance to collaboratively discover drugs that AstraZeneca will subsequently develop and market.
The theme of the alliance is cancer metabolism – a promising area, yet to date, it has been under investigated.
The collaboration is seeking to understand how cancer cells might use energy differently to normal cells in order to survive and grow, particularly under the conditions of reduced nutrient and oxygen supply faced by rapidly-growing tumours. New drugs that interfere with cancer cell metabolism could attack an ‘Achilles heel’ of the tumour whilst sparing normal tissues.
The alliance team is working at CRT’s Discovery Laboratories in London and Cambridge, and AstraZeneca’s cancer research centre near Manchester on a jointly selected portfolio of projects with supporting basic science from Cancer Research UK’s portfolio of biological research in the field. Around 30 scientists are focused on creating a stream of new anti-cancer drugs.
CRT is using its network of Cancer Research UK scientists to focus the search for new targets that can be modulated to change the way a cell uses energy, while AZ brings additional discovery expertise and resources.
AstraZeneca will then take the promising projects into pre-clinical and clinical drug development. Through the course of the alliance CRT will receive milestone payments and royalties on the projects that AstraZeneca take into clinical development.
View our press announcement.
Since the announcement of this alliance, there has been a huge amount of interest in the area of cancer metabolism and our new model of working:
Targeting Tumour Metabolism (July 2010)
Biotechs Target Cancer Metabolism (September 2010)
Fuel Lines of Tumors are New Target (November 2010)© Cancer Research Technology 2012