AstraZeneca and MRC LMB to launch new research fund

AstraZeneca will support innovative medical research by helping to launch a new fund for preclinical research projects aimed at better understanding the biology of disease.

The company is allying with the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB) to establish the fund, with AstraZeneca contributing six million pounds and its partner providing three million pounds over a period of five years.

Projects supported by the fund are likely to involve scientists from the two organisations working side by side. These undertakings would be pre-competitive and would not be specifically targeted towards drug development

Instead, they will feed into the existing research and development activities of the two organisations, with results published in peer-reviewed journals. The work will foster a better understanding of the fundamental processes that underlie normal function and disease.

Menelas Pangalos, executive vice-president of innovative medicines and early development at AstraZeneca, said: "Collaboration and scientific exchange are at the heart of AstraZeneca's innovation-led strategy, and this new fund will support our researchers to do exactly that."

According to ambitious business plans outlined by the company earlier this month, AstraZeneca hopes to generate annual revenues of more than $45 billion (26.77 billion pounds) by 2023.