Cancer Research UK partners with VC firm in $25m deal
Charity Cancer Research UK has united with SV Health Investors, a venture capital and growth equity firm, to develop new cancer medicines for patients.
In conjunction with the collaboration, which was announced yesterday, July 2, Cancer Research UK is investing at least $25 million alongside SV.
Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: “The strength of our science portfolio is unrivalled but only through working in collaboration can we achieve the greatest impact. This collaboration is a huge opportunity to accelerate our research and support the successful development of the much-needed treatments for people with cancer.”
SV will work with Cancer Research UK to identify promising, novel research from within the charity’s network that “could be rapidly developed and scaled by securing external investment”.
SV and Cancer Research have worked together before—in 1998, the two companies established Kudos Pharmaceuticals. Kudos is the inventor of olaparib, an approved DNA damage response (DDR) inhibitor for cancer patients with BRCA (tumour suppressor genes) mutations.
Iain Foulkes, Cancer Research UK’s executive director, research & innovation, said: “We need to encourage more entrepreneurialism if we want to get more medicines to patients to beat cancer. This was recognised in the UK life sciences strategy and this new collaboration with SV will be a huge boost to advancing cancer research here in the UK.”
In August 2017, the UK government published its life sciences strategy, which includes recommendations on how the UK could exploit its existing strength to increase the pace of economic growth in the life sciences industry.
Kate Bingham, SV Health Investors’ managing partner, added: “Working in close collaboration gives us an opportunity to identify promising research within Cancer Research UK’s labs and give that science the investment, resources and expertise it needs to progress.”
The charity invests more than £400 million ($503 million) every year in cancer research. It has more than 30 partnered potential medicines in pre-clinical and clinical development, and eight treatments are already available on the market and benefiting patients.
In September last year, Cancer Research UK invested £14 million into a hub for cancer biotherapeutics research and treatment in London. Researchers from three London universities and the Francis Crick Institute are working together to tackle all cancer types at the centre.
Towards the end of last year, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and Cancer Research UK announced it would launch the Functional Genomic Centre to accelerate the discovery of new cancer treatments.
The centre is using CRISPR technology to research the biology of cancer and create new biological models to more accurately mirror human disease.
Then, in March this year, the charity formed a multimillion-pound drug discovery alliance with fellow charity LifeArc and Japanese company Ono Pharmaceutical. The collaboration will identify targets for the development of both antibody and small molecule therapeutics.
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