探花直播 of Cambridge - Kathryn Chapman

Hitting the right note for innovation in Cambridge

skbf2 — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 19:19:54 +0000

Kathryn Chapman, Executive Director of Innovate Cambridge, on the secrets of successful innovation and her ambitious plans for innovation in Cambridge and beyond.聽

AstraZeneca to fund a further 55 PhD studentships with 探花直播 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.

鈥淐ambridge 探花直播 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,鈥� said Kathryn Chapman, Deputy Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute and the 探花直播鈥檚 Relationship Manager for AstraZeneca.

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations, 探花直播 of Cambridge underscores an important piece of working across subject areas: collaboration. He said: 鈥淭raining 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.鈥�

鈥淭his new agreement demonstrates AstraZeneca鈥檚 commitment to developing early career scientists and offers a fantastic opportunity for AstraZeneca and Cambridge 探花直播 to collaborate by sharing knowledge and expertise across academia and industry,鈥� 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鈥檚 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.

探花直播探花直播 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 探花直播 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

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright 漏探花直播 of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified.聽 All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways 鈥� 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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Joining the dots

skbf2 — Wed, 26 May 2021 12:03:01 +0000

A new online community of researchers, businesses and healthcare providers is bringing the future of medicine one step closer.

Cambridge is one of the UK鈥檚 leading centres of life sciences and innovation. Researchers from the 探花直播 and the world-leading research institutes on our doorstep have contributed to major breakthroughs in healthcare. Monoclonal antibodies, IVF and gene sequencing technologies are just some of the life-changing innovations to have emerged from the Cambridge Cluster.

探花直播need to connect

Cambridge is also a research powerhouse in maths, physics, computer science and engineering. 探花直播future of healthcare - earlier detection, better diagnostics, more-personalised medicine - lies where these disciplines meet. Maths and computer science, for example, are driving advances in AI which will help us to better understand biological processes (and hence where to target drugs), interrogate the vast genomic datasets that underpin personalised medicine and improve how clinical trials are run. Inventing new diagnostics and medical devices, using new materials and new processes such as additive manufacturing, needs both medical and engineering know-how.

There are plenty of examples of powerful interdisciplinary collaborations in the 探花直播, such as the new Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. But finding out who does what and connecting the right people across a complex ecosystem is not always easy. An already difficult task is made harder by the fact that researchers in different disciplines, executives in large companies, entrepreneurs and clinicians often talk a very different language and have different expectations of collaborative activities. Once connections have been made, therefore, it can be a challenge to convert them into projects which go on to have a 鈥榬eal-world鈥� impact.

A clear vision

Connect: Health Tech, a Cambridge 探花直播 Enterprise Zone was set up in 2019 with funding from Research England expressly to bridge these interdisciplinary and inter-organisational gaps through a range of activities. A roadmapping exercise was carried out, using innovation management techniques developed at the 探花直播鈥檚 Institute for Manufacturing. Key stakeholders were brought together to identify the top five barriers to collaboration and the best ways to overcome them. 探花直播report, Creating a 探花直播 Enterprise Zone for Cambridge across the life and physical sciences, will be published in June 2021.

Building a community

探花直播roadmap identified a clear need: a digital way of connecting and collaborating with people across the Cambridge ecosystem. A year later, we are delighted to be launching, a new, easy-to-navigate online community where the physical and life sciences can meet, along with entrepreneurs, large corporates, venture capitalists, science parks, National Health Service and member organisations. While focused on Cambridge initially, in time we hope that it will help community members forge connections further afield and expand the geographical boundaries of the ecosystem to create the right environment for ideas, start-ups, innovation and co-creation to thrive.

探花直播idea of Connect: Health Tech is to 鈥榡oin the dots鈥�, to help researchers from different disciplines to find each other and other resources they might need, whether that is mentorship, skills, equipment, funding or physical space. For businesses, it鈥檚 about all that as well as being a welcoming, easy-to-navigate way into the complexity of the 探花直播 and the wider Cambridge cluster.

Getting successful collaborations off the ground often relies on the efforts of a relatively small group of people who have the knowledge and expertise to make connections 鈥� and broker relationships - across projects, disciplines and sectors. Connect: Health Tech brings these 鈥榮uper-connectors鈥� together in one place, creating a hugely powerful resource that, we hope, will both bring people together and provide the support they need to take collaborations forward.聽聽

How it works

Users will be able to find new contacts and networks and the community can post events, funding opportunities and jobs of interest. Special interest groups will encourage businesses and academics to discuss areas of common interest, with the topics chosen to catalyse inter-disciplinary interactions across the physical and life sciences. In time, the intention is that businesses will use these groups to share the challenges they face so the community can help solve real world problems

If Connect: Health Tech is successful it will benefit everyone 鈥� business, academia and patients. We want to see it leading to stronger and deeper interaction between physicists, material scientists, chemists, engineers, biotechnologists, biologists and clinicians across academia and industry leading to more clinically beneficial projects. And we hope it will strengthen the already rich pipeline of healthcare spin-outs, start-ups and SMEs that emerge and flourish in the Cambridge Cluster.

Please join us

With this blog comes an open invitation for businesses and individuals to join the online community and to get involved. 探花直播link is here.聽We will ask you a few short questions about why you want to join, what expertise you bring and what your expectations of it are. 探花直播platform is designed to enable informal connections and provide an easy way into Cambridge through individuals. It鈥檚 not a searchable website, it鈥檚 a live discussion forum with access to real people. I look forward to seeing and connecting with you there!

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Dr Kathryn Chapman
Deputy Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute
and 探花直播 Relationship Manager for the Cambridge-AstraZeneca Partnership

聽

May 2021

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Surgical robot

Heal thyself

skbf2 — Mon, 24 May 2021 13:28:20 +0000

Three companies,聽Astex Pharmaceuticals,聽Eisai Ltd聽and聽Eli Lilly and Company, are joining forces with research scientists across Cambridge to explore promising new approaches to the treatment of neurodegenerative disease.

探花直播 Enterprise Zone aims to drive innovation across Cambridge

cjb250 — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 09:01:19 +0000

Research England, part of UK Research and Innovation, today announced 20 new 探花直播 Enterprise Zones (UEZs) aimed at helping universities stimulate growth in their local economies, providing vital support for innovative new companies and creating jobs in emerging industries.聽探花直播拢20 million investment will strengthen collaborative ties between universities and businesses.聽

Cambridge鈥檚 UEZ, Greater Cambridge Health Tech Connect, will look at testing and integrating inter-disciplinary models of incubation across West Cambridge, where many of the 探花直播鈥檚 physical sciences and engineering departments, including the Maxwell Centre and the Institute for Manufacturing, are based, and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in the South. It will address real world challenges, including unmet medical聽needs, using innovative thinking across disciplines.

鈥淥ur aim is to create new ways of collaborating across physics, technology, engineering, biology and medicine and use this to drive innovation in healthcare, manufacturing and engineering,鈥� explains Dr Kathryn Chapman,聽Deputy Director at the Milner Therapeutics Institute.

鈥淭his Enterprise Zone will explore and scale up new and existing models of business incubation, strengthening the聽interdisciplinary聽bridge between two major Cambridge research hubs. This will drive new research and development, and deliver a model that can be applied more widely to support company incubation.鈥�

探花直播announcement has been welcomed by Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the 探花直播 of Cambridge, who led the application. 鈥淐ambridge has a rich history of scientific discovery and innovation, and its innovation ecosystem is recognised as world leading. This new government funding will help us build and strengthen connections across often very different disciplines, further accelerating innovation across the city and beyond.鈥�

Funding for the UEZs has been announced alongside an investment of 拢78 million in the second wave of UK Research and Innovation鈥檚 Future Leaders Fellowships. Dr Daniel Field from the Department of Earth Sciences and Dr Jamie Blundell from the Department of Oncology have both been named as recipients of new funding.

Universities Minister Chris Skidmore said: 鈥淒elivering on our research and innovation ambitions means putting people first, whether they are just starting out in their career or are leading major projects in academia or industry.

鈥淭hese inspirational Future Leaders Fellows will generate the ideas of the future, helping to shape science and research for the 21st century. But to realise the full potential of these discoveries, their ideas need to be taken out of the lab and turned into real products and services, where they can actually change people鈥檚 lives for the better.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 why we are creating 20 new 探花直播 Enterprise Zones, helping local start-ups to co-locate in universities to build the businesses of the future 鈥� all inspired by university research.鈥�

Update 2021:

探花直播探花直播 Enterprise Zone has now launched.

Cambridge is to establish a 探花直播 Enterprise Zone as part of a new government initiative announced today by Universities Minister Chris Skidmore.

Cambridge has a rich history of scientific discovery and innovation, and its innovation ecosystem is recognised as world leading. This new government funding will help us build and strengthen connections across often very different disciplines, further accelerating innovation across the city and beyond

Andy Neely

Aerial view of Cambridge Biomedical Campus

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Milner Therapeutics Institute: a drug discovery ecosystem

lw355 — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 14:30:05 +0000

Professor Tony Kouzarides is the founding Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, which is due to open in 2018 on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. 探花直播ecosystem he sees thriving within its walls is one in which academic researchers (鈥渆xperts in the biology of diseases鈥�) work closely with pharmaceutical companies (鈥渨ho know what鈥檚 needed to get the drug to clinic鈥�) to find new medicines. Put simply, he says, the Institute will be 鈥渁 pipeline for drug discovery within an academic setting.鈥�

While the labs are being fitted out with robotics for customised drug screening, gene-editing facilities to rewrite DNA and bioinformatics support to help scientists deal with huge datasets, the partnerships between industry and academia are already under way.

In June 2015, a research agreement was signed between the 探花直播 of Cambridge, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Babraham Institute with three pharmaceutical companies 鈥� AstraZeneca (AZ), Astex and GSK. Since then, Pfizer, Shionogi and Elysium Pharmaceuticals have joined the Milner Therapeutics Consortium, the outreach programme of the Institute.

With this one agreement, doors opened. Dr Kathryn Chapman, Executive Manager of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, explains: 鈥淔orming the Consortium means there鈥檚 now a free exchange of potential drug molecules between pharma and academia. This sounds straightforward but, before the agreement, this could take a year because of confidentiality and material transfer contracts. Now it takes two to three weeks. It lowers barriers of engagement, it speeds up research and it can involve hundreds of molecules in one go.鈥�

One consequence is drugs that have already been approved for use in certain diseases are now being tested for use in other diseases 鈥� a practice called repositioning or repurposing.

鈥淎n academic might have developed a brain disease model using an organoid 鈥� a mini organ in a Petri dish,鈥� explains Kouzarides. 鈥淲e can use this to test drugs that have been licensed for use in other diseases such as arthritis or cancer.鈥�

It also means that novel therapeutic agents across the entire portfolio of drugs being developed by each of the companies can be screened at an early stage in biological assays, to see whether any are worth progressing along the drug development pipeline.

For example, one of the Consortium鈥檚 first collaborative projects is a partnership between AZ and Professor Carlos Caldas at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.

Breast cancer consists of several different genomic subtypes, which makes effective treatment challenging and prognosis variable. Some subtypes respond well to particular drugs or drug combinations whereas others are resistant. Caldas has pioneered the development of a biobank of patient-derived breast cancer cells and tissues that have greater predictive power for clinical outcome than other preclinical models (such as cancer cell lines).Carlos and AZ are now working together to test how different subtypes of breast cancer respond to different AZ compounds and compound combinations, as well as looking at potential drug-resistance mechanisms.

From 2018, the Consortium will form a major part of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, which has been made possible through a 拢5m donation from Dr Jonathan Milner, a former member of Kouzarides鈥� research group and entrepreneur. Milner and Kouzarides are two of the founders of leading Cambridge biotechnology company Abcam.

鈥淥ne of the main aims of the Institute will be to develop multiple disease models to understand how drugs could work on the real disease,鈥� explains Kouzarides. 鈥淲e plan to focus on some of the most challenging diseases to start with 鈥� cancer, neurodegeneration and inflammation 鈥� but we are disease agnostic. If we have a method of testing for efficacy and a library of molecules to test, then we鈥檒l test!鈥�

Kouzarides鈥� enthusiasm for making sure the 鈥楶etri-dish-to-pill鈥� pipeline works comes from his own positive experience of a collaboration with GSK that has resulted in a leukaemia drug now being used in the clinic to treat patients.

It came about through serendipity. 鈥淕SK was developing a molecule called I-BET against an epigenetic protein. I was a consultant on the project and became aware that the molecule could be effective against mixed lineage leukaemia (MLL), the most common type of leukaemia in children under two years old. We had the cell assays and disease models in Cambridge, and we asked to test the drug. It worked and it鈥檚 now in the clinic.

鈥淚 started to wonder why this pharma鈥揳cademia collaboration doesn鈥檛 happen more often. People have been talking about the translational gap between fundamental research and the clinic for years, and it鈥檚 still there. While serendipity is good 鈥� and many amazing medical innovations have come out of chance encounters 鈥� we can鈥檛 trust only to chance.

鈥� 探花直播world needs new medicines to be developed. It鈥檚 time-consuming and costly, and that鈥檚 why we need an ecosystem that will nurture and speed up the success.鈥�

探花直播Milner Institute will be within the Capella building at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, alongside the relocated Wellcome Trust/MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, and 探花直播Cambridge Centre for Haematopoiesis and Haematological Malignancies.

Tony Kouzarides is passionate about ecosystems: well-balanced communities that flourish on mutual and dynamic interactions. But the ecosystems that excite him are not made up of plants, animals and environments. They鈥檙e made up of experts.

探花直播world needs new medicines to be developed. It鈥檚 time-consuming and costly, and that鈥檚 why we need an ecosystem that will nurture and speed up the success.

Tony Kouzarides

David Anderson

Neurons

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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