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AstraZeneca, MRC enter into new drug discovery collaboration

AstraZeneca has entered into a strategic collaboration with the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) to create a new center for early drug discovery in Cambridge, UK.

The joint research facility will be located at AstraZeneca’s new research and development (R&D) center in Cambridge, scheduled to be completed in 2016.

The AstraZeneca MRC UK Centre for Lead Discovery will see MRC-supported researchers working along with scientists in AstraZeneca’s screening group, to identify new methods to better understand a range of diseases and potential treatment options.

Under the deal, which will run for an initial period of five years, academic researchers will benefit from unprecedented access to over two million molecules in AstraZeneca’s compound library, as well as its high throughput screening facilities at the new site.

The company said that research proposals will be submitted to the MRC that will independently assess and select the best scientific proposals from a broad range of therapy areas and diseases.

The MRC will fund about 15 screening projects per annum to be conducted at the Centre for Lead Discovery.

AstraZeneca executive vice president of Innovative Medicines and Early Development Menelas Pangalos said the major strategic alliance with the MRC will further the company’s aim of creating a truly new and collaborative research environment at its new site in Cambridge, where its teams will work side by side with world leading MRC scientists.

"Through this collaboration AstraZeneca and the MRC will push the boundaries of science to accelerate drug discovery and the development of new medicines here in the UK," Pangalos said.

The company said that some initial projects are expected to be initiated as early as 2015, based at its existing research facilities.