Univ of Montreal leads partnership to accelerate cancer therapeutics

A consortium of more than 75 research groups has received new funding to accelerate the development of new and innovative medicines combatting cancer. The Unit for the Discovery of Medicines at the Univ of Montreal (UDM2) is establishing a commercialization unit to move innovative discoveries along the drug discovery chain more quickly and effectively by linking its discovery portfolio and technological platforms to new partners that include innovative pharmaceutical companies.

The new commercialization unit — IRIC in Therapeutics Discovery (IRICoR) — was recently awarded $15 million from the Centres for Excellence in Commercialization and Research (CECR) program to aggressively deliver on its mandate through new partnerships. UDM2 brings together researchers from the Univ of Montreal's recently created Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC), the University Research Group in Drug Discovery and the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital.

IRICoR has already attracted the participation of one major pharmaceutical firm. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co has signed on to supply lead compounds which IRICoR will examine to determine the most promising candidates for commercialization (R$, March 11/08). The partnership will add value to novel cancer therapeutics by reducing time in the development pipeline while training scientists required by the biopharmaceutical industry of the future.

"This financing from CECR is excellent timing for us to set up the commercialization side, which is the next critical stage in a project that has been going on for five years," says Dr Daniel Lamarre, IRICoR's interim CEO and principal investigator at IRIC's Molecular Immunovirology Laboratory. "We can partner with anyone at any place within the drug discovery bio-chain starting from concept to almost clinical trials."

IRIC is a biomedical and training research centre with more than 250 scientists working on various aspects of cancer research from basic science to clinical applications. With more than $100 million in financing already committed to new facilities and technology platforms it expects to double its research team to 500 by 2010.

"This has been priority number one for the Université de Montréal in order to build a centre of research excellence for drug discovery," says Lamarre. "We have complete infrastructure from target identification and validation up to pre-clinical candidates as well as proof of concept through Phase I and Phase II trials. We have 11 platforms for drug discovery which makes us the biggest facility of this type in Canada."

The three-year agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb illustrates the growing recognition of IRICoR's strength in identifying novel approaches and tools. It also underscores the accelerating trend within the pharmaceutical industry of building value through mixed private-public research projects.

"It's one of the biggest partnerships we have to date and it indicates that the company realizes we are ready to go and fully functional," says Lamarre. "With key managers we are able to look into a portfolio of projects and understand what industry is looking for earlier in the pipeline."

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