University Hospitals, a healthcare affiliate of Case Western Reserve University, has reported a strong start for its $250m drug development programme.
Started three years ago, the Harrington Project for Discovery and Development (HPDD) was launched to help research cross the valley of death. While the project is yet to fully transform life sciences in the Northeast Ohio region, the project has noted progress.
For a start, HPDD’s venturing unit, the Harrington Discovery Institute, has recently attracted $54m in financial backing from government and institutional sources, and now has $150m in backing since launching in 2012.
Its for-profit accelerator and technology transfer centre BioMotiv has also had good results. It has launched five spin-outs, and aims to add three to four additional companies this year. It also secured $25m from Takeda Pharmaceuticals last year, and a further $20m from venture firm Torrey Pines Investment in 2013.
HPDD has also formed a partnership with the UK’s Oxford University last year, and one of its UK-based spin-out has just announced that it could receive up to $122.5m from pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca if it hits milestones over the next three years.
Despite this, the project’s leaders are holding off from yet calling HPDD a success. Jonathan Stamler, director of Harrington Discovery Institute, said: “We are not successful. We’ve got a lot of traction and are much further along than we had expected, but we are not successful. Period.”
