̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - AstraZeneca

Cambridge partners with AstraZeneca and Medical Research Council on new world-class functional genomics laboratory

skbf2 — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 10:30:22 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge today announced a partnership with AstraZeneca and the Medical Research Council (MRC) to establish a new state-of-the-art functional genomics laboratory at the Milner Therapeutics Institute (MTI). ̽��ֱ��laboratory will become part of the UK’s Human Functional Genomics Initiative, contributing to the UK’s ambition of having the most advanced genomic healthcare system in the world.

Functional genomics investigates the effects and impacts of genetic changes in our DNA, and particularly how these contribute to disease. CRISPR makes it possible to test specific DNA alterations in a controlled way to investigate the effects and impacts of genetic changes in our DNA, revealing their effects on biological processes that cause disease. Finding these disease drivers is a key first step in the process of identifying potentially life-changing medicines for patients.

̽��ֱ��new facility, which will be located within the MTI on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, will provide researchers from across the UK with access to large-scale biological and technological tools and house an advanced automated arrayed-CRISPR screening platform. It is hoped that through the use of tools, such as CRISPR gene editing to provide insights into the relationship between genes and disease, scientists will discover new opportunities to develop therapies for chronic diseases including cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic disease.

Professor Tony Kouzarides, Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, said: “ ̽��ֱ��best science is founded on collaboration, and I am delighted that the Milner Therapeutics Institute is partnering with the MRC and AstraZeneca to launch this unique functional genomics laboratory. This will enable sharing of expertise and resources to deliver new diagnostics and treatments for people with chronic diseases.”

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “This new collaboration with AstraZeneca and MRC is a fantastic example of industry and academia working together to drive forward science that will have a real impact on people’s health in the UK and around the world.”

Dr Jonathan Pearce, Director of Strategy and Planning, MRC, said: “We are working across UK Research and Innovation to improve health, ageing and wellbeing. Our investment in this new laboratory builds on the UK’s global leadership in genomics. Our support will enable the laboratory’s launch and provide access for researchers from across the UK. Through this investment, and the wider Human Functional Genomics Initiative, we will enhance the national ecosystem needed to improve our understanding of how genetic variance impacts health and disease.”

Sharon Barr, Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca, said: “Collaboration is crucial to achieving our ambition of transforming healthcare and delivering life-changing medicines for patients, and innovative partnership such as this one, allow us to share resources and expertise to advance science. This new laboratory created as part of the Human Functional Genomics Initiative, will be world-leading and will play a central role in shaping future functional genomics work across the UK and beyond.”

̽��ֱ��lab, which is expected to become operational in 2024, will provide a centre of excellence and national resource that combines the strengths and expertise of academia and industry. Its creation is part of a new partnership formed between MTI, AstraZeneca and MRC, and builds upon expertise gained through an existing collaboration between MTI, AstraZeneca and Cancer Research Horizons, known as the AstraZeneca-Cancer Research Horizons Functional Genomics Centre (FGC) that has been enabling advances in oncology research since 2018. ̽��ֱ��FGC is currently housed in the MTI and will be relocating next year.

MTI, AstraZeneca and the MRC’s Human Functional Genomics Initiative will share facilities, resources and knowledge working closely together to facilitate faster progress and innovations.

̽��ֱ��facility, based at the Milner Therapeutics Institute, will support the discovery of new medicines and diagnostics for chronic diseases by applying advanced biological and technological tools, including CRISPR gene editing.

A fantastic example of industry and academia working together to drive forward science that will have a real impact on people’s health in the UK and around the world.

Andy Neely

Milner Therapeutics Institute

Scientist looking down microscope

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Strategy unveiled to boost innovation in Cambridge

skbf2 — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 15:55:21 +0000

̽��ֱ��Innovate Cambridge Summit saw over 400 leaders from across the civic, business and academic working communities to support the science and technology cluster to maintain its position as a world leader amid fierce international competition.

Cambridge has evolved into a global innovation hub over the last 30 years, with over 5,500 knowledge-intensive businesses generating revenues exceeding £20bn annually and 23 billion-dollar unicorn companies born in the city. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is also the number one university in the world for producing successful tech founders, ahead of Harvard and MIT, with over 500 alumni founders raising more than $10 million in funding.

Recognising this, the city and its innovation ecosystem is now presented with a generational opportunity to maximise economic and social return. International benchmarking indicates that Cambridge can do more to enhance its position in the global innovation landscape.

This new home-grown innovation strategy, which has had input from 200 organisations, including Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Cambridge Innovation Capital, AstraZeneca, Microsoft, ARM, Darktrace, Cambridge City Council, and Cambridge County Council and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority will propel the ecosystem towards a groundbreaking future.

In the past twelve months, the Cambridge ecosystem has seen significant collaboration, with over 200 organisations endorsing an Innovation Charter and extensive consultations involving more than 500 individuals to craft an innovation strategy. ̽��ֱ��culmination of these efforts, Innovate Cambridge, seeks to leverage the city's unique position as a driver of Britain’s growth, fostering collaboration, and catalysing innovation for the benefit of local communities and the broader UK.

In pursuit of this vision, Innovate Cambridge has identified three strategic goals:

An innovation ecosystem firing on all cylinders. Innovate Cambridge envisions improved health and social care, optimised energy use, and enhanced agricultural outcomes through world-leading life sciences research and AI applications. ̽��ֱ��focus will be on creating a green growth strategy, fostering economic growth, and supporting social infrastructure.
Ensuring the innovation ecosystem provides value and impact for the local community. Innovate Cambridge aims to increase collaboration within and beyond the region, formalising partnerships with other innovation hubs and economic centres. ̽��ֱ��initiative strives to deliver high-quality employment and training opportunities while ensuring benefits extend beyond geographical limits.
Forming partnerships with other regions and collaborators to drive scale and deliver social and economic benefits. By 2035, Innovate Cambridge aims to achieve significant economic, social, and environmental impact through collaborations and partnerships. Practical infrastructure issues, such as water scarcity and transportation, are addressed in conjunction with local government and Cambridge Ahead.

"Innovation is critical to local, national and global prosperity and central to the UK's economic success. Cambridge is the UK's leading research-based innovation ecosystem. A recent analysis found that spinouts and start-ups associated with the ̽��ֱ�� contributed over £18bn to the UK economy and there are many other companies within the Cambridge ecosystem without a direct connection to the ̽��ֱ�� that make a further significant contribution." Professor Andy Neely OBE, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

“ ̽��ֱ��City Council has an important placemaking and leadership role for the whole city. We want Cambridge to be an even better place to live, work and study, and ensure the city maintains its status as a global innovation hub. Cambridge also has significant challenges around health inequalities, housing affordability, and life changes for disadvantaged young people. That’s why it's vital successful businesses, innovators, and entrepreneurs that have benefited from the unique, nurturing, innovation environment in Cambridge to give back to the city in a more tangible way.” Robert Pollock, Chief Executive, Cambridge City Council

"This strategy represents a pivotal moment for the innovation ecosystem in Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��collaboration of over 200 organisations has yielded a strategic roadmap that provides a shared vision for Cambridge as a global innovation hub. This initiative, rooted in inclusivity and sustainability, will drive positive economic and social impacts for the local community. Cambridge Enterprise is proud to be part of this ambitious endeavour, and we look forward to fostering groundbreaking discoveries and translating them into world-changing businesses." Dr Diarmuid O'Brien, Chief Executive, Cambridge Enterprise

“Innovation is critical to local, national and global prosperity and central to the wider UK growth agenda, and Cambridge remains the most intensive science and technological cluster in the world. It is an ecosystem where companies have the potential to go from lab to market quicker than anywhere else. We excel in life sciences, deep tech, and interdisciplinary research; and the city is home to a blend of start-ups and global leaders. ̽��ֱ��fact that so many of those stakeholders and businesses have now come up with an inclusive, forward-looking plan to ensure the city continues to innovate, compete, and deliver impact on a global scale, fills me with enormous pride.” Michael Anstey, Partner, Cambridge Innovation Capital

News release first published by Cambridge Enterprise

An ambitious new strategy to nurture and grow its innovation ecosystem has been unveiled at Cambridge summit.

Yes

Apollo Therapeutics secures $226.5 million to translate fundamental research into medicines

skbf2 — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 16:43:21 +0000

̽��ֱ��investment will be used to advance new treatments through clinical development and further fund Apollo’s drug discovery and development activities based on breakthroughs in basic medical research made at its partner research institutions. ̽��ֱ��financing will also be used to license or acquire additional clinical stage programmes that meet strict selection criteria.

Apollo has a scalable R&D platform for the discovery and development of new medicines. It selects programmes based on the quality of the science and their potential to transform the standard of care. This is enabled by an unprecedented level of access to world-class research institutions through partnership agreements.

Apollo Therapeutics was originally a six-way partnership devised by the technology transfer offices of three world-leading universities ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Imperial College London and ̽��ֱ�� College London) and embraced by pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Johnson & Johnson Innovation. In June 2021, following a $145 million raise, Apollo became an independent biopharmaceutical company. ̽��ֱ��original partners all remain and have recently been joined by King’s College London and ̽��ֱ��Institute of Cancer Research.

This financing round was led by Patient Square Capita and significantly adds to the $195 million previously raised by Apollo Therapeutics.

“We are delighted to announce the close of our latest fundraise and wish to thank our existing investors for their continued support, as well as warmly welcoming all the new investors. Apollo has built a broad and diversified pipeline focused on major commercial markets and this latest fund-raising enables us to take our most advanced programs to key clinical value inflection points.” Dr. Richard Mason, Chief Executive Officer of Apollo Therapeutics

“I have long believed in a business model for drug development characterized by extremely talented management, sufficient capital to pursue multiple programs and world-class science focused on unmet medical need. We are proud to support Apollo Therapeutics as it develops a number of promising medicines that we anticipate will eventually transform patient care.” Jim Momtazee, Managing Partner of Patient Square Capital, and member of Apollo Therapeutic’s Board of Directors.

“This is a fantastic achievement, from a great team and great investors capitalising on a unique effective drug discovery and development model. We are so proud to have been founders with great colleagues at Imperial College and UCL with our pharma partners AstraZeneca, GSK and Johnson and Johnson to deliver patient benefit from groundbreaking academic science.” Dr Iain Thomas, Head of Life Sciences, Cambridge Enterprise

Adapted from a news release published by Cambridge Enterprise

Apollo Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company originally set up by three UK universities (Cambridge, Imperial College London and ̽��ֱ�� College London) and three pharmaceutical companies (AstraZeneca, GSK and Johnson & Johnson Innovation), has secured $226.5 million venture capital financing.

Philippedelavie, Pixaby

test tubes

Yes

New initiative to promote innovation in the Greater Cambridge area

skbf2 — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 12:51:02 +0000

Innovate Cambridge is an initiative to create an inclusive vision for the future of Cambridge and its innovation ecosystem. ̽��ֱ��initiative was launched in September 2022 by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Cambridge Enterprise and Cambridge Innovation Capital. Organisations that have signed up to its charter include local government, start-ups, universities, science parks and investors. As well as announcing its first 100 signatories, Innovate Cambridge has also appointed an Executive Director and established a steering committee.

Tabitha Goldstaub, co-founder of festival and online platform CogX and a UK government advisor, has been appointed Innovate Cambridge’s Executive Director and the Rt Hon. Lord Willetts as Chair of its Steering Committee. Other members of the Steering Committee include Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Yvonne Barnett, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation for Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��, Shaun Grady, AstraZeneca’s Senior Vice-President Business Development Operations and Robert Pollock, Chief Executive of Cambridge City Council.

Cambridge has been a global leader in innovation for decades, with its two universities, thriving start-up community, global businesses and strong investment network. But, “standing still is not an option,” said Diarmuid O’Brien, CEO of Cambridge Enterprise: “Many cities and regions across the world are rapidly getting organised to secure their futures. We must learn from and build on their experiences.”

̽��ֱ��next step, according to Michael Anstey, Partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, is for the signatories to the Charter, “to come together to define, and then implement, an inclusive, forward-looking vision for the ecosystem, which ensures the City continues to innovate, compete, and deliver impact on a global scale well into the future.”

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Cambridge has made a difference to the lives of millions of people around the world. A constant source of new ideas and innovations, the Cambridge innovation ecosystem spawns new ideas, technologies and insights that change the way we live and learn. ̽��ֱ��charter is a really exciting next step in the development of the Cambridge innovation ecosystem, bringing together key organisations and people to help shape the future of Greater Cambridge and ensure that together we continue to contribute to society.”

Read about some of the Cambridge start-ups that are having an impact in the UK and around the world here.

100 organisations, including AstraZeneca, Microsoft and Arm, have signed up to a new charter to boost the Cambridge innovation ecosystem and help it address global challenges, announced Innovate Cambridge today (8 December 2022).

̽��ֱ��charter is a really exciting next step in the development of the Cambridge innovation ecosystem, bringing together key organisations and people to help shape the future of Greater Cambridge and ensure that together we continue to contribute to society.

Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations

Innovate Cambridge

Tabitha Goldstaub, Innovate Cambridge’s Executive Director

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

AstraZeneca to fund a further 55 PhD studentships with ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

skbf2 — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 15:48:10 +0000

This new agreement aims to equip research students with the capabilities to work across disciplines and sectors. In addition, students will hone important translational skills that are needed to turn their research into new medicines and better outcomes for patients.

“Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and AstraZeneca see the future of medicine happening at the intersection of different disciplines, where biological understanding of disease processes and the chemistry of how drugs work, meets engineering and artificial intelligence,” said Kathryn Chapman, Deputy Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute and the ̽��ֱ��’s Relationship Manager for AstraZeneca.

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge underscores an important piece of working across subject areas: collaboration. He said: “Training the next generation of brilliant scientists who are able to collaborate with colleagues in different disciplines and with industry partners will be critical to getting new treatments to patients.”

“This new agreement demonstrates AstraZeneca’s commitment to developing early career scientists and offers a fantastic opportunity for AstraZeneca and Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� to collaborate by sharing knowledge and expertise across academia and industry,” said Jacqui Hall, Head of Early Careers and R&D Learning, AstraZeneca.

Learning how to collaborate and translate advances in research into breakthroughs that improve patient outcomes will be central to the programme. To facilitate this, each student will have both an academic and industry supervisor. They will also benefit from access to AstraZeneca’s state-of-the-art labs at its Discovery Centre, home to over 2,200 scientists based on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

By participating in the programme, students will gain insights into all stages of the drug discovery pipeline and receive guidance as to how they can collaborate with industry and help turn their research into new life-changing medicines for patients.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has formed a new agreement with AstraZeneca for the global biopharmaceuticals company to fund 55 additional PhD studentships over the next five years, starting in October 2022. Over the last 20 years, AstraZeneca has funded more than 100 PhD students from the ̽��ֱ�� as part of a longstanding partnership between the two institutions.

Training the next generation of brilliant scientists who are able to collaborate with colleagues in different disciplines and with industry partners will be critical to getting new treatments to patients.

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Enterprise and Business Relations

Benjamin Lehman, unsplash

Researcher looking at flask in lab

Yes

Training a new breed of clinical triallist

skbf2 — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:48:27 +0000

Cambridge's Experimental Medicine Initiative, working with AstraZeneca and GSK, is training specialists who can work out at an earlier stage of clinical trials if a treatment is likely to succeed.

New model improves accuracy of machine learning in COVID-19 diagnosis while preserving privacy

sc604 — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 10:48:16 +0000

̽��ֱ��international team, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Huazhong ̽��ֱ�� of Science and Technology, used a technique called federated learning to build their model. Using federated learning, an AI model in one hospital or country can be independently trained and verified using a dataset from another hospital or country, without data sharing.

̽��ֱ��researchers based their model on more than 9,000 CT scans from approximately 3,300 patients in 23 hospitals in the UK and China. Their results, reported in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, provide a framework where AI techniques can be made more trustworthy and accurate, especially in areas such as medical diagnosis where privacy is vital.

AI has provided a promising solution for streamlining COVID-19 diagnoses and future public health crises. However, concerns surrounding security and trustworthiness impede the collection of large-scale representative medical data, posing a challenge for training a model that can be used worldwide.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many AI researchers worked to develop models that could diagnose the disease. However, many of these models were built using low-quality data, ‘Frankenstein’ datasets, and a lack of input from clinicians. Many of the same researchers from the current study highlighted that these earlier models were not fit for clinical use in the spring of 2021.

“AI has a lot of limitations when it comes to COVID-19 diagnosis, and we need to carefully screen and curate the data so that we end up with a model that works and is trustworthy,” said co-first author Hanchen Wang from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “Where earlier models have relied on arbitrary open-sourced data, we worked with a large team of radiologists from the NHS and Wuhan Tongji Hospital Group to select the data, so that we were starting from a strong position.”

̽��ֱ��researchers used two well-curated external validation datasets of appropriate size to test their model and ensure that it would work well on datasets from different hospitals or countries.

“Before COVID-19, people didn’t realise just how much data you needed to collect in order to build medical AI applications,” said co-author Dr Michael Roberts from AstraZeneca and Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. “Different hospitals, different countries all have their own ways of doing things, so you need the datasets to be as large as possible in order to make something that will be useful to the widest range of clinicians.”

̽��ֱ��researchers based their framework on three-dimensional CT scans instead of two-dimensional images. CT scans offer a much higher level of detail, resulting in a better model. They used 9,573 CT scans from 3,336 patients collected from 23 hospitals located in China and the UK.

̽��ֱ��researchers also had to mitigate for bias caused by the different datasets, and used federated learning to train a better generalised AI model, while preserving the privacy of each data centre in a collaborative setting.

For a fair comparison, the researchers validated all the models on the same data, without overlapping with the training data. ̽��ֱ��team had a panel of radiologists make diagnostic predictions based on the same set of CT scans, and compared the accuracy of the AI models and human professionals.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their model is useful not just for COVID-19, but for any other diseases that can be diagnosed using a CT scan. “ ̽��ֱ��next time there’s a pandemic, and there’s every reason to believe that there will be, we’ll be in a much better position to leverage AI techniques quickly so that we can understand new diseases faster,” said Wang.

“We’ve shown that encrypting medical data is possible, so we can build and use these tools while preserving patient privacy across internal and external borders,” said Roberts. “By working with other countries, we can do so much more than we can alone.”

̽��ֱ��researchers are now collaborating with the newly-established WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, to explore the possibility of advancing the privacy-preserving digital healthcare frameworks.

Reference:
Xiang Bai et al. ‘Advancing COVID-19 Diagnosis with Privacy-Preserving Collaboration in Artificial Intelligence.’ Nature Machine Intelligence (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-021-00421-z

Researchers in the UK and China have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can diagnose COVID-19 as well as a panel of professional radiologists, while preserving the privacy of patient data.

By working with other countries, we can do so much more than we can alone

Michael Roberts

U.S. Department of Energy

Covid-19

Yes

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Public Domain

One man, three companies, tens of thousands of lives...

skbf2 — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 08:12:28 +0000

Professor Steve Jackson talks about drug discovery, serial entrepreneurship and the enterprising mindset.