AbbVie becomes Dementia Consortium’s latest pharma partner
pharmafile | February 16, 2016 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Research and Development |
AbbVie has become the latest pharmaceutical company to join The Dementia Consortium– a £4 million global collaboration aiming to speed development of new treatments for the condition.
AbbVie joins medical research charity MRC Technology, Alzheimer’s Research UK, and fellow pharma companies Astex, Eisai and Eli Lilly in the partnership involving academia, charity and the private sector.
The Consortium aims to find new drug treatments for dementia, using the combination of expertise to drive early-stage drug discovery programmes against promising academic targets for neurodegenerative disease.
The Consortium said AbbVie brings additional expertise, resources and capital allowing more projects to be funded and progressed towards patient benefit.
Dr Jim Summers, vice president of Neuroscience Discovery Research at AbbVie, comments: “We are pleased to be part of the Dementia Consortium. This innovative approach to validating new drug targets is an important component of our strategy to develop new therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases.”
Dr Simon Ridley, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, says: “It’s a very positive development to have AbbVie join the Dementia Consortium, strengthening our ability to accelerate the search for effective new treatments for dementia. We know that in order to find new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, we need to explore as many different approaches as possible, and our growing range of Pharma partnerships will ensure we can continue to invest in a diverse range of projects to build drug discovery pipelines.”
To date, the Consortium has awarded over £1.5m to early-stage drug discovery efforts for neurodegenerative diseases, including projects targeting the immune system in an attempt to halt nerve cell damage in Alzheimer’s, and a project studying targeting TDP-43 aggregation in frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Joel Levy
