AstraZeneca and Cancer Research UK expand alliance

AstraZeneca has announced a new extension to its successful multi-project cancer metabolism alliance with Cancer Research UK.

The pharmaceutical company will now be working alongside the research-based charity group to produce a drugs pipeline targeting cancer metabolism until early 2015, thus aiding the development of their four existing projects and two potential additional undertakings.

This field of research assesses how cancer cells use energy to survive and grow in order to support the creation of new therapies that can disrupt these processes, thus killing tumours while sparing healthy cells.

Work on these projects will continue at Cancer Research UK's Discovery Laboratories in London and Cambridge, as well as AstraZeneca's cancer research centre at Alderley Park in Manchester.

Susan Galbraith, head of the oncology innovative medicines unit at AstraZeneca, said the alliance "allows AstraZeneca to collaborate with leading scientists in the field of cancer metabolism and to further build on our efforts to identify new agents to target cancer cells' dependence on altered metabolic pathways for their survival".

Earlier this month, the company announced a restructuring of its neuroscience research alliance with Targacept, with the aim of providing both partners with greater flexibility.