Scotland’s Edinburgh BioQuarter has negotiated a transatlantic partnership under which US-based multinational Eli Lilly will collaborate with the Edinburgh Cancer Discovery Unit (ECDU) to illuminate the company’s oncology pipeline.
The agreement, which is part of Lilly’s external-innovation strategy, will give the company access to highly specialised biology models at EDCU with potential to deliver further insights into the mechanism of action of selected Lilly oncology compounds.
Set up in 2011 as part of the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital, the ECDU combines state-of-the-art imaging and pathway analytical methodologies with preclinical models and access to annotated clinical samples.
In mid-2012, Edinburgh BioQuarter forged a partnership with Galapagos under which the Belgian biotech draws on the ECDU’s technical capabilities in elucidating the activity of selected compounds in various forms of cancer.
Following on from the Galapagos partnership, a recently announced collaboration with Biogen Idec and a longstanding association with GlaxoSmithKline, the Lilly agreement “further demonstrates the industry’s growing awareness of the depth of world-class translational research being undertaken here in Edinburgh”, said Diane Harbison, head of business development at Edinburgh BioQuarter.
