LDC and AstraZeneca broaden Drug Discovery Alliance
The Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC) and AstraZeneca have expanded their alliance to discover new medicines for the treatment of human diseases with high unmet medical need. Through an additional three-year period of collaboration, AstraZeneca will provide an extended set of high-quality compounds to the LDC’s internal screening collection to pursue projects in the areas of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, oncology, respiratory and inflammation and neuroscience.
The renewal of the partnership follows a successful two-year period of collaboration and establishes the LDC as one of AstraZeneca’s four leading translational centers. Over the last two years, the LDC and AstraZeneca have already initiated six high-potential drug discovery projects which are progressing well.
Under the terms of the alliance, the LDC will screen the combined compound collection of more than 450,000 compounds against a portfolio of innovative biological targets. Targets will be carefully selected by the LDC from its broad range of academic partner institutions, including members of the Max Planck Society, Germany's leading basic research organization. A joint steering committee oversees the collaboration and reviews the output. The LDC takes the most promising compounds into further drug discovery by optimizing them into pharmaceutical leads with in vivo proof-of-concept. AstraZeneca has a preferred right to obtain a license for pre-clinical and clinical development and commercialization for collaboration projects.
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