Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Cancer Research UK's technology transfer division is to establish a drug discovery laboratory in Cambridge

Cancer Research Technology Ltd (CRT), the specialist oncology development and commercialisation company, is expected to invest around £15 million over the first five years of the project whose success will be measured by its ability to land both corporate and academic licensing deals.

The organisation hopes to progress new and existing projects by tapping into the well of biotech resources available in Cambridge, which CRT's director of drug discovery, Dr Hamish Ryder, said was deeper than London's.

The decision will provide a huge boost to the Cambridge biotech cluster - the industry's largest outside the US - as Cancer Research UK's research stands on a par with the world's top pharma groups.

"Cancer Research UK invested over £300 million in basic research last year, which compares to any big pharma company," said Dr Ryder. "None of them are investing that amount in understanding the biology of these diseases; it's a privilege to get that kind of science."

Cancer Research UK already has a major Cambridge presence through the Cambridge Research Institute (CRI), on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus at Addenbrooke's where it is housed in the custom-built £50m Li Ka Shing Centre, backed by a further £15m for capital investment and infrastructure.

With 25 scientists being brought in at the new 10,000 sq ft facility by September, there is plenty of spare laboratory capacity, which CRT intends to use for collaborations with industry and academia, including the potential incubation of Cancer Researchassociated spin-outs.

The principal aim of the organisation, which focuses on preclinical work, is to get new therapies developed and into patients; it will attempt to achieve this by landing as many collaborations as possible. CRT has already been instrumental in establishing several oncology spin-outs based in the region including Antisoma Research, KuDOS Pharmaceuticals and Phogen, as well as many others around the UK, particularly in the South East and Greater London.

Now Cambridge will be a focal point for CRT, which has already taken on a dozen scientists at the new site - part of the old Millennium Pharmaceuticals facility on Coldhams Lane - a mix of new recruits and scientists drawn from its existing UCL operation.

The CRT site is the first multidisciplinary CRT Discovery Laboratory to be established outside the main laboratory at UCL's Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research and will build on Cancer Research UK's investment in world-class research, identifying potential novel therapies based on the cancer targets identified and validated in academia.

Dr Ryder said the two organi sations will not be covering the same ground and will in fact be hightly complementary. "This is not more of the same, we are trying to build on the back of research in order to develop therapies for patients, taking academic discoveries on.

"It will help us to meet growing demand and enable projects to be completed more quickly, ensuring potential therapies are identified and progressed efficiently.

"We also hope to create many new partnerships with leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to supplement their drug development pipelines."

CRT says the need for expansion has been driven by the successful progression of groundbreaking cancer discovery projects from early stage through to more resource intensive later stage projects and it plans to announce partnering activities related to several CRT programmes at BIO2008 in the US.

Though Dr Ryder would not be drawn on the details of the collaborations, at least one is believed to be directly linked to the new Cambridge operation, which has inherited two or three existing CRT projects.

"We are working on projects for which we are in active discussions with potential partners," said Dr Ryder. "As we move forwards we hope to take on new ones."

Dr Keith Blundy, CEO of CRT, said: "The opening of CRT Cambridge forms part of our five-year expansion plan, which aims to locate CRT research staff close to or within major Cancer Research UK Institutes. We hope this exciting period of development will increase integration of basic and applied research, and ultimately benefit patients."

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