AstraZeneca to launch CRISPR-based cancer research centre
Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and charity Cancer Research UK have announced that they will launch a centre to accelerate the discovery of new cancer treatments.
The UK-based company announced the collaboration in a statement issued yesterday, December 10.
The Functional Genomic Centre will use CRISPR technology, a gene-editing platform, to research the biology of cancer and create new biological models to more accurately mirror human disease. The centre will also seek to further develop methods of analysing big data.
According to the statement, the centre, to be located at the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the University of Cambridge, will provide independent access to CRISPR technology for scientists from both AstraZeneca and Cancer Research UK. It said that scientists from both organisations will also work alongside each other.
Mene Pangalos, executive vice president at AstraZeneca, said that the combined expertise of both organisations in CRISPR and functional genomics would “accelerate the development of new cancer medicines for patients”.
Iain Foulkes, executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK, said that the charity hopes that the new centre will harness powerful new technologies to produce “urgently needed new therapies for patients with hard-to-treat cancers such as lung, pancreatic, oesophageal and brain tumours”.
AstraZeneca recently collaborated with the UK-based Wellcome Sanger Institute in building CRISPR libraries of the human and mouse genomes. Scientists will have full access to these facilities through the new centre.
The pharmaceutical company has also embarked on a new collaboration with the Innovative Genomics Institute, based in the US, to develop the use of CRISPR in uncovering the causes of DNA damage response. This is“a key process involved in many cancers”, the statement said.
Research into the role of CRISPR in treating human disease has advanced considerably in recent years.
In October, LSIPR reported that the US Food and Drug Administration authorised a human-based trial of CRISPR technology for the first time. In January, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese scientists had used CRISPR in treating at least 86 cancer patients since 2015.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.
