Case Study - Anti-viral Drug Development
Sector: Healthcare
An innovative partnership between Newcastle University Medical School and a drug development company has facilitated development of drug candidates that are active against infectious diseases and have entered clinical development.
Professor Alastair Hawkins and his team in Newcastle carry out contract research into the properties and function of target proteins, thereby contributing to the development of anti-viral drugs.
Arrow Therapeutics, the company involved, was co-founded by Professor Hawkins 12 years ago with five academic associates from Oxford and Cambridge Universities and University College London.
Arrow raised £42.6 million of venture capital and private investment, of which around £4 million has come to Newcastle over the past 12 years. This contract has sponsored 6 PhD studentships, pays staff salaries and experimental costs and funds a core facility of scientific instrumentation in Professor Hawkins’ laboratory.
The arrangement has been hugely beneficial for Newcastle University. Arrow sponsored research has been published in over 20 academic papers. and some limited spare capacity in the instrumentation facility has been used to facilitate Research Council funded academic projects that would not otherwise have been possible.
In 2007 London-based Arrow was bought by drug giant AstraZeneca, and the arrangement continues. Professor Hawkins is a strong advocate of commercial collaboration of this kind that indirectly helps support important areas of academic research.
He says “It is exceptional to have such a good collaboration between an academic institute and a company - the key to long term success has been to actively manage the projects and be responsive to the changing research needs of the company.”
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