Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceutica is teaming up with Tennessee's Vanderbilt University to discover and develop new schizophrenia treatments. The extensive relationship calls for Vanderbilt to receive $10 million over three years and up to $100 million in milestone payments. In a twist, Vanderbilt researchers won't just discover the drug; they'll continue to work out kinks in the compound until it's ready for human testing. This is unusual because the "drug optimization" process is usually conducted by the biopharma company rather than the university.
"It's a culmination of efforts we've been putting in place for five year to build a drug discovery infrastructure not typical in academic settings," Jeffrey Conn, Ph.D., Director of Vanderbilt's Program in Drug Discovery, tells FierceBiotech "This is a different structure because we've put in place a full drug discovery team and infrastructure that allows us to fully optimize a compound."
J&J is the drug discovery program's first big pharma partner. The university also has deals with the Michael J. Fox foundation for Parkinson's disease and Seaside Therapeutics for Fragile X syndrome. Seaside was a natural fit for Vanderbilt because the small drug developer was able to take advantage of the university's drug discovery infrastructure--something many small biotechs lack. While J&J has the resources to do the work itself, the company has chosen to use Vanderbilt's expertise rather than using in-house resources to optimize any compounds the university discovers. Conn says Vanderbilt will look to sign more agreements with both Big Pharma and smaller developers.
This deal represents Big Pharma's new deal with academia. Pharma and biotech companies have developed closer ties with labs that are doing the earliest research, even having their scientists interact with university researchers on a regular basis. Previously, the industry simply gave university research labs funding and, in return, reaped the rights to whatever discoveries came out of those labs. Supporters say this set-up benefits both sides and gets groundbreaking research into the clinic quickly. Critics worry that universities are becoming too dependent on the industry for research funding.
- see Vanderbilt's release
- here's the WSJ article