The PharmaGossip blog reports that AstraZeneca and the UK's Medical Research Council have agreed to share experimental drug compounds - 100,000 from AZ's library and 50,000 from the Council.
PharmaGossip: FT.com - AstraZeneca secures deal with academia. See FT post here.
Both academic groups and AZ will have access to wider array of drug for screening. Under the deal, AZ will alos have earlier access to academic findings. It will have options to license promising leads for commercial development.
This deal is in alignment with AZ's stated R&D strategy of seeking outside partners and outsourcing new drugs candidates. This comes on the heels of AZ recent agreement to share 500,000 compounds with the non-profit Medicines for Malaria venture. Other large pharma, like Pfizer, have recently cut deals with academic groups providing access to heretofor proprietary company libraries to widen the search and hopefully speed discoveries.
Posted by Bruce Lehr July 5th 2010.
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