Pharmaceutical companies large and small have a novel new program for translating academic research into product and services with the launch of the CQDM/CIHR Collaborative Funding Program to Accelerate Drug Discovery in Personalized Medicine. The pilot will fund three to four projects seeking to develop next-generation technologies, computational tools and devices in the areas of cancer, infection and immunity and neurodegeneration affecting cognition.

With a budget of $2.25 million (augmented by private sector contributions valued at about $560,000), the pilot is the first partnership between the Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). While modest in scope, both parties hope the pilot's success will lead to an expansion of the program and greater funding as pharmaceutical firms realize the value of collaborating at a pre-competitive level and gaining access to a huge pool of academic research.

For CQDM — which is partly funded by the Business-Led Networks of Centres of Excellence (BL-NCE) program — the pilot marks CQDM's entry onto the national stage. It will be followed by an even larger national initiative to be announced in May.

"This is the first time we have worked in a pan-Canadian program and it's different from anything else we have done before," says CQDM president and CEO Dr Diane Gosselin. "Through CIHR we have access to their network and authority in personalized medicine and we bring the capacity to foster public-private research collaboration between research institutions and SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises)."

Now in its sixth year of operation, CQDM has been one of the most productive entities to spring from NCE funding, which provides approximately one third of the $65 million it has raised to date. Federal funding is matched by the Quebec government through the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology's program to support sectoral industrial research and private sector contributions.

"We want to have results quickly to see how the new model creates value and how we can work in the future with CIHR. Personalized medicine is a big interest for both parties but we have many other areas of mutual interest," says Gosselin. "What we bring is our mentorship program which is generating a lot of interest from pharma and researchers. It ensures that technologies we develop are aligned with the needs of the pharma industry and has a lot of value for researchers as our mentors are at a global level."

Mentorship is key to each project

Three of CQDM's seven pharma partners (see chart) are engaged in the CQDM-CIHR pilot and each company is permitted to include more than one mentor in each project.

"Mentors allow pharma to get close to the researchers and the results. Even before the end of the projects, mentors are collaborating with researchers and sharing the results with the rest of the consortium," says Gosselin. "We now have a network of over 70 mentors who come from global pharma operations. The number is getting bigger all the time and 80% of the technologies developed through CQDM are now being used by our pharmaceutical partners."

Joint review process

CQDM and CIHR will select projects in areas of personalized medicine not targeted by other organizations such as computational tools and imaging technologies. Letters of intent submitted by June 27th will be vetted through a two-stage evaluation by a joint advisory committee based on their relevance to the program and potential impact on biopharmaceutical research. Full applications will subjected to an external peer review and a scientific evaluation process by CIHR. Projects will then be ranked according to the pilot's three areas of research and submitted to the board of the two organizations for final approval.

For CIHR, the pilot expands its suite of Signature Initiative programs for personalized medicine that includes collaborations with Genome Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

"We have had industry-partnered programs before but this is one of the first times we've had this kind of partnership … This is part of something much deeper where CIHR is trying to move in (the first valley) of commercialization," says Dr Paul Lasko scientific director of the CIHR Institute for Genetics — one of four CIHR institutes participating in the pilot. "CQDM's unique approach in which they embed each project with a private sector person in a mentorship role is great for trainees as it gives them private sector exposure."

Lasko says a key objective of the pilot is to make SMEs investment-ready. Intellectual property remains with the inventor and affiliated researchers while companies gain non-exclusive access to project results.

"There will be a large pool of applicants and these will be larger projects. CIHR funding will come from the institutes that are involved in the projects," says Lasko. "The key issue for the private sector partners is participating in the generation of clear deliverables and immediate application."

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