Pfizer and MIT Synthetic Biology Center agree new research alliance

Pfizer has entered into an innovative new drug discovery and development alliance with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Synthetic Biology Center.

The collaboration is designed to translate leading discoveries in synthetic biology to advance drug research technology and will take place over three years, spanning multiple therapeutic areas.

It aims to reevaluate standard operations, identify areas for improvement and develop new methodologies in the field of biotechnology and biomanufacturing, in order to bring an end to time-consuming and costly processes.

Synthetic biology technologies anticipated for development through this collaboration include methods for cellular genome engineering to support next-generation protein expression systems.

Jose Carlos Gutierrez-Ramos, Pfizer senior vice-president and head of biotherapeutics research and development, said: "We are reaching a key inflection point where advances in synthetic biology have the potential to rapidly accelerate and improve biotherapeutics drug discovery and development."

This comes after the company allied with Merck Sharp and Dohme earlier this month to study the potential benefits of innovative combination cancer therapies.