Yale professor Craig Crews says the partnershop reflects "a new paradigm" of how academics and the pharmaceutical industry can partner.
UK-based pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and US-based Yale University [the Beinecke Library is pictured] set up a drug discovery research collaboration on Tuesday last week.
The partnership is designed to develop Yale’s work on "proteolysis targeting chimeric molecules", which help the body destroy disease-causing proteins. The two institutions are looking to show these molecules can be turned into medicines.
The pair said in a statement: "GSK will then have the right to use this technology for multiple disease-causing proteins across all therapy areas. For each protein-degrading drug that is discovered and developed, Yale will be eligible for milestone and royalty payments."
Kris Famm, head of GSK’s Protein Degradation effort will lead the programme with Craig Crews, the Lewis B. Cullman Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale.
Crews said: "The relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and academia is changing and this collaboration offers a new paradigm for how pharma companies and academic researchers can benefit from working more closely together."
Famm said: "This partnership is exploring a new way for promising, but unproven therapeutic approaches to jump from the academic lab more quickly into the early stage pharmaceutical pipeline. The ground-breaking work Craig and his team have done may allow us to tackle a whole host of disease-causing proteins that were previously out of reach for medicines, and it is exciting to work together to try to realise that promise."
