Nottingham BRC Signs for Open Innovation Platform

Leading research teams at the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre are to collaborate over the next two years with their counterparts in the IMED Biotech Unit at global biopharmaceutical company, Astra Zeneca. The agreement could lead to the faster development of new treatments for some of the most common diseases, including arthritis and asthma.

Nottingham is the first NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) in the UK to formally establish a collaboration with AstraZeneca’s Open Innovation platform, which provides the opportunity for teams working in six areas of clinical research to draw the company’s extensive range of chemical compounds, as part of their work on the development of new therapies and treatments.

Professor Ian Hall, Director of the NIHR Nottingham BRC and Professor of Molecular Medicine in the University of Nottingham's School of Medicine, said: “We are delighted to announce this agreement, which is the first collaboration of its kind between the AstraZeneca platform and a NIHR-funded research centre in the UK.

“One of the fundamental differences that biomedical research centres such as the one in Nottingham can make is in building partnerships across health, research and industry to translate innovation into new treatments for patients.”

He added: “The NIHR Nottingham BRC provides an ideal environment to undertake early experimental medicine studies and by working closely with the AstraZeneca Open Innovation platform we will be able to use our expertise in early clinical translational research to develop novel treatment approaches using drugs being developed by AstraZeneca

Dr Lorraine Webber, Head of Emerging Innovations at AstraZeneca’s IMED Biotech Unit, said: “We are excited to enter this collaboration with one of the UK’s key Biomedical Research Centres and look forward to working together on some innovative translational and clinical research projects. Combining the expertise of the academic and clinical experts at NIHR Nottingham BRC with AstraZeneca’s drug development capabilities is an ideal way to further the understanding of diseases and discover potential new therapies.”