Cancer Research UK initiates $250m fund

UK-based charity Cancer Research UK yesterday announced a $250m commercialisation fund in partnership with venture capital firm SV Health Investors to accelerate the translation of cancer research.
Cancer Research UK is committing at least $25m to the SV7 Health Impact Fund. The fund will focus solely on biotechnology and will allocate 60% of the capital to oncology, with a significant portion set to go to UK-based companies.
The charity will tap into its network of 18 core-funded centres to identify opportunities and will work with SV to attract external investment. It hopes the fund will lead to the development of cancer therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics and enabling technologies.
SV7 complements Cancer Research UK’s existing paths to commercialisation. The charity invests some $525m a year in research and has brought eight treatments to market so far, with another 30 in pre-clinical and clinical development.
While university spinouts were not named explicitly as a target for the fund, the two partners already have established links to the ecosystem. They previously collaborated to spin out cancer-focused biotechnology company Artios Pharma in 2016.
Artios, which has also licensed Masaryk University research, has raised $120m in funding to date from investors including commercialisation firm IP Group and corporate venturing units Pfizer Ventures, Novartis Venture Fund, M Ventures and AbbVie Ventures.
SV and Cancer Research UK previously also formed Kudos Pharmaceuticals, which exploited research from University of Cambridge into DNA repair inhibitors, in 1998. Kudos agreed to a $210m acquisition by pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca in 2005.
Iain Foulkes, executive director, research and innovation, at Cancer Research UK and chief executive of the charity’s tech transfer arm, Cancer Research Technology, said: “We need to encourage more entrepreneurialism if we want to get more medicines to patients to beat cancer.
“This was recognised in the UK Life Sciences Strategy and this new collaboration with SV will be a huge boost to advancing cancer research here in the UK.
“The UK has some of the very best research in the world and working together with a world leading venture group such as SV will accelerate progress and generate new biotech to be established here.”