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| Scripps Research Institute in Florida--Courtesy of Scripps |
Scripps' two big research outfits in California and Florida have allied themselves with the J&J ($JNJ) Innovation Center in Menlo Park, CA, on an effort designed to take some of their early-stage breakthroughs and spin off new development programs, looking to kick-start a few biotech startups and Big Pharma match-ups along the way.
Scripps' big initiative here--dubbed Scripps Advance--is tailor-made to fit into a new trend in biotech. A group of venture operations have been seeding new biotechs and partnering up with pharma companies scouting for projects they can option and later pick up and push through the clinic, provided they can get past the critical proof-of-concept stage. J&J--which has been working hard at forging close ties to research organizations like Scripps--set up a global network of deal-making centers to hunt up new technologies. And it can finance new companies with the most promising technology.
"We want to work in a scout and matchmaking capability with Scripps Advance and then potentially those projects that are of interest. We would consider providing seed funding to found early-stage drug discovery companies," J&J's Thorsten Melcher told GEN.
Scripps Advance didn't wait for the announcement today to begin work. The dealmaking arm of the research institutions says it worked with the team at Atlas Venture to launch Padlock Therapeutics to hunt down new therapies targeting the protein arginine deiminases, which it describes as a new class of enzymes that can play a role in autoimmunity and epigenetics.
Padlock's technology was developed in the laboratories of TSRI investigators Paul Thompson and Kerri Mowen, in collaboration with Scripps Florida's high-throughput screening facility.
Other venture groups will be courted to help finance new companies, setting up portfolios that can be sold on to Big Pharma collaborators.
- here's the release
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