Pfizer has extended its chain of drug discovery innovation centers in Boston, New York, and San Francisco to include San Diego. UC San Diego Health Sciences says today it signed a partnership agreement with Pfizer that could be worth as much as $50 million in funding from the New York pharmaceutical giant over the next five years.
Pfizer established its Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) as part of a drive for more open, collaborative, and entrepreneurial-minded research, with the goal of dramatically slashing years from the time spent in drug development. The local CTI staff will include researchers from Pfizer, the UC San Diego School of Medicine, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and other UCSD scientists.
The partnership is intended to build on the expertise in translational medicine that UC San Diego boosted last year, when its Clinical and Translational Research Institute received a five-year, $37.2 million award from the National Center for Research Resources, part of the National Institutes of Health.
Under the partnership, Pfizer will open some of its antibody libraries and technologies to UC San Diego scientists. The pharmaceutical company also agreed to help support the pre-clinical and clinical development of sponsored programs. Pfizer grants intellectual property rights to its partners, who also are granted milestone payments and royalties based on how well drug candidates advance.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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