“Skills Swap” to exploit expertise for patient benefit

Cancer Research Technology (CRT) and MRCT will ‘swap’ medical discoveries to accelerate the translation of early scientific research into patient benefit. CRT and MRCT can offer each other rights to manage, develop and license discoveries from research funded by parent charity Cancer Research UK and the government’s Medical Research Council. The arrangement will explore ways to make the most of each organisation’s expertise and speed up the licensing of potential products for patient benefit.

AstraZeneca and MRC Technology form strategic alliance in discovery research, utilising shared compound libraries

The companies will combine up to 100,000 compounds from AstraZeneca’s collection with the MRC Technology compound library of approximately 50,000 compounds. MRC Technology will screen this larger combined library searching for compounds that show activity against novel biological targets. A joint steering committee will review these hits, and decide how to advance promising compounds that could become innovative medicines.

Adding value to early stage IP

Mike Dalrymple, Director at MRC Technology, has written an article for The Innovation Handbook about adding value…

O2h provides multi-FTE -synthetic chemistry services to MRCT

MRCT translates cutting edge scientific discoveries into commercial products, two of which (Tysabri and Actemra) are already on the market. The MRCT Centre for Therapeutics Discovery works closely with the MRCT Intellectual Property and Business Development Division and is rigorous in the selection of well‐defined and characterised targets, and considers novelty, validation and ‘druggability’. In addition, the group works on targets where there is a clear strategy for progression and development.

MRCT’s call for targets

A major centre created by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and MRC Technology (MRCT) in order to fast-track the discovery and development of novel drugs, opens its first call for targets today. The MRCT Centre for Therapeutics Discovery (CTD), based in London, is seeking small molecule drug discovery and therapeutic antibody targets from academic researchers.

Collaboration between Georg-August-University Göttingen, Universitätsmedizin, the University of Regensburg and MRCT

The collaboration will focus on development of a novel therapy of inflammatory and immune diseases based on the depletion of inflammatory monocytes. The first targets will be rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and multiple sclerosis (MS).

DiscoveRX, GSK & MRCT collaborate to de-orphanise GPCRs

DiscoveRX, GSK & MRCT collaboration to de-orphanise GPCRs mentioned in an article about universities driving new technology…

Bicycle Therapeutics is new MRC spinout

The spin out is a new biotechnology company developing a novel technology platform for the creation of a new generation of biotherapeutics, has secured seed funding from Atlas Venture and Novartis Venture Fund. Bicycle Therapeutics combines the most desirable features of small molecules and biologics, to create highly specific and highly stable drugs.

DiscoveRX GSK and MRCT collaborate to deorphanise GPCRs

The three way alliance aims to seek out natural substances that bind to G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Through the identification of the natural ligand for these receptors it is anticipated that this work will identify and validate new drug targets that could ultimately help develop new therapies, as compounds that modulate GPCRs are already the basis of many licensed medicines.