DRUG DISCOVERY: Pact with Scripps researcher will draw ideas from academia
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DDING A NEW PAGE to the academia-industry
collaboration playbook, Merck & Co. is investing up to $90 million over seven years to help create the California Institute for Biomedical Research (Calibr), a vehicle for university scientists to turn ideas into drug candidates. Scripps Research Institute chemistry professor and biotech entrepreneur Peter G. Schultz will head the San Diego-based not-for-profit. Linking academic labs to big pharma to translate basic biological discoveries into medicines has proven challenging, Schultz says. The concept behind Calibr is “to build another academic-like operation that could interface very well with other academics in a collaborative model,” while also linking to industry, he says. In essence, Calibr will be an intermediary between big pharma and academic scientists: The institute will partner with university researchers anywhere in the world to bring their drug discovery programs to the point of proof of concept in animal models. At that stage, Merck will have an option to license a project; if Merck passes on it, Calibr can shop a drug candidate around to other companies or even explore spinning off the research as a stand-alone company. The model captures the strengths of each party at each stage in the drug discovery process and allows only the best programs to be developed, Peter S. Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratories, tells C&EN. Calibr will have dedicated lab space in San Diego
that will eventually house roughly 150 scientists who will help further develop the basic research contributed by university researchers around the world. About half the staff will have drug industry experience, Schultz expects, and the other half will be “bright young postdocs interested in pursuing translational activities.” A scientific advisory board headed by Harvard Universitybiologicalchemistryandpharmacologyprofessor Christopher T. Walsh will review proposals submitted by university researchers and select which ones Calibr will pursue. The institute could have up to 20 ongoing collaborations in the first two years, Schultz says. Merck has no particular preference regarding the disease areas Calibr takes on, Kim says. Rather, he says, “What we want is for the science to compete with the science, and [we will] pick out the very best ideas.” Drug companies in recent years have been exploring new and more fruitful ways of collaboratSchultz ing with academic scientists than just providing research grants. AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson all have established broad pacts with institutions that entail working side by side with academic scientists to accelerate target validation and drug discovery. For Merck, the Calibr collaboration is an important next step in evolving how it works with academia. “We’re not interested in doing collaborations with entire institutions or departments, but rather we ask, ‘Who is the best person in the world—who should we be working with?’ ” Kim says. “Calibr enhances that strategy and moves it to the next level. Essentially, any scientist anywhere in the world can tap into Calibr.”—
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PARTNERSHIP L’Oréal and EPA join to reduce use of animals in toxicity tests Cosmetic company L’Oréal has committed $1.2 million to help EPA’s Office of Research & Development (ORD) advance its high-throughput chemical screening system called ToxCast. As part of the agreement, EPA will test 20 chemicals found in L’Oréal products using ToxCast to determine whether the system can reliably predict the chemicals’ toxicity. The chemicals include dyes and surfactants that are commonly used in cosmetics. ToxCast was developed to rapidly predict toxicity, EPA says, including cancer and reproductive and developmental effects. It relies on models developed
from the results of hundreds of biological assays. The system has been validated with hundreds of pesticides and other chemicals with extensive animal toxicity data. ToxCast “has now gotten to the point of maturity where within the agency we are starting to consider using it in regulatory decisions,” David Dix, acting director of EPA’s National Center for Computational Toxicology within ORD, said at a March 12 briefing. “We are testing thousands of chemicals in ToxCast,” Dix noted. “This will allow us to understand how these chemicals interact with the biology of human
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cells and tissues and to predict the potential hazard,” he said. The ultimate goal of ToxCast is to reduce the use of time-consuming, animalintensive toxicity tests, EPA says. “We stopped animal testing of finished products in 1989,” said Patricia Pineau, scientific communications director for L’Oréal. Since then, the company has invested $800 million to promote alternative testing, including the use of reconstructed tissues, she noted. “We are focused on the full replacement of the animal models in all safety evaluations,” she said.— BRITT ERICKSON
