AstraZeneca, MRC Technology To Jointly Identify New Treatments For Serious Disease

AstraZeneca and MRC Technology are expected to combine up to 100,000 compounds from AstraZeneca’s collection with around 50,000 from MRC, where MRC is expected to screen the the combined library against selected biological targets.

Initially, the combined libraries are expected to be examined for cancer, cardiovascular, neuroscience, and infection. MRC Technology will choose five additional targets to explore.

Further, a joint steering committee will review the process and decide how to move ahead the potential compounds that demonstrated positive results as a drug candidate.

Under the contract, AstraZeneca and MRC will retain ownership of their respective compounds. Individual projects chosen to go forward would trigger option fees and the parties would negotiate further research and license agreements.

Jin Li, director global compound sciences at AstraZeneca, said: “This collaboration gives us early access to new disease understanding and related novel drug targets, allowing us to broaden the scope and choice of programmes we take forward.”

Alan Lamont, director science and technology alliances at AstraZeneca, said: “This deal represents a novel and creative way in which we can generate more value from one of our most significant assets – our compound collection, which may ultimately lead to the development of better medicines for patients.

“We continue to look for ways to maximise the value of our chemical assets externally through a range of collaborations.”