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August 15, 2011 - Volume 89, Number 33
- p. 9
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Forensic Chemistry: A new method could increase the number of explosives detected by airport screeners.
Trade: U.S. companies complain of market dumping by China.
Layoffs follow similar moves by Amgen, AstraZeneca.
Environment: Ban to halt export of hazardous waste to developing world.
Penrose (Parney) Albright will direct DOE national lab.
Toxic Exposure: Mercury isotopes in human hair illuminate dietary and industrial sources.
Cancer Biochemistry: Mass spectrometry follows the metabolism of very long fatty acids in cancer cells.
Pfizer has added another node to a growing network of academic collaborators intended to speed its discovery of protein-based drugs. The newest member of Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI)—the University of California, San Diego, Health Sciences—will receive up to $50 million in a five-year collaboration.
The drugmaker launched CTI in November 2010 with UC San Francisco as its first partner. Pfizer has since announced CTIs in New York City and Boston. At each location, the company is setting up labs where its scientists can directly collaborate with university partners. Each lab will house a staff of antibody engineers, assay biologists, protein scientists, and project managers, Pfizer says.
Under the CTI model, academic scientists submit proposals to a steering committee composed of university and Pfizer representatives. For every project that receives funding through CTI, Pfizer will pay for two postdoctoral or clinical fellows.
For the UCSD project, Pfizer plans to hire about 15 scientists to work with university researchers in dedicated lab space at the company’s site in La Jolla, Calif. The firm is already recruiting 30 scientists to work at its planned research center in San Francisco’s Mission Bay. Overall, the California collaborations could receive up to $150 million in research support and milestone payments if molecules they discover complete Phase I studies.
Pfizer is one of several major drug firms attempting to leverage academic expertise to lower R&D costs and improve productivity.
Kenneth I. Kaiten, director of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, says Pfizer’s partnering strategy is “particularly good” because it calls for industry and academic scientists to work side by side. “That’s something that a lot of the other plans in major companies exploring partnerships are not really allowing for,” Kaiten observes. In the process, he says, Pfizer gains access to cutting-edge science, and academics can tap into the company’s development and commercialization expertise.
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