Photo by Susan Urmy
Cancer Center, AstraZeneca unite to streamline research
The Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and AstraZeneca have developed a master scientific agreement to streamline and integrate collaborations in basic, translational and clinical cancer research.
“Our ultimate goal is to shorten the time to approval of more effective new drugs and new combinations,” said Carlos Arteaga, M.D., director of Vanderbilt-Ingram's Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Breast Cancer. “In the end, the patients win.”
Such agreements provide a framework for the basic contractual issues that would be common to any mutual research project. Separate, specific research plans are then developed that can move forward more quickly under the umbrella of the Master Agreement. Specific terms are confidential.
“This framework will enable us to move more quickly to the research that will lead to better treatments for cancer,” said Steve Strand, global director of external scientific relationships for AstraZeneca.
The agreement allows Vanderbilt-Ingram and AstraZeneca to combine their scientific expertise and resources around common goals, which include identifying new molecular targets for therapy and “biomarkers” to assess and predict response to treatment.