Partnership Expands For Discovery Of Novel Cancer Treatments

Bayer and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard expand partnership to advance drug discovery research for novel cancer treatments.

Bayer and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced today that they have extended their multi-disciplinary research partnership by an additional five years, to develop and advance novel cancer treatments.

The expanded agreement will focus on a defined goal to jointly identify three new additional investigational drugs (INDs) for novel oncology targets.

Established in 2013, the partnership brings together the Broad Institute’s expertise in cancer research and chemical biology with Bayer’s in-depth experience in small, chemically manufactured molecules and biologics drug discovery.

In 2015, the collaboration was expanded to examine genomics and drug discovery in cardiovascular disease. With this recent extension, the Broad Institute will also bring their expertise in biomarker development and patient selection and clinical trial design.

Now extended to 2023, the Bayer-Broad collaboration is uniquely structured to encourage close coordination and ongoing, face-to-face interactions between researchers at both organizations. For example, an alliance manager from Bayer is located at the Broad Institute to help coordinate projects and ensure researchers have rapid access to information.

The research is guided by joint project and governance teams. In addition to identifying investigational drugs for novel oncology targets and generating the associated intellectual property, the institutions will continue to openly share the biological knowledge generated with the scientific community, including through publicly available datasets and publications in academic journals.

“Ultimately it means a greater chance of making critical discoveries, and rapidly delivering on these findings, so we can reach patients,” Todd Golub, chief scientific officer of the Broad Institute, said.

(Source: Bayer AG)