German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Innovation Management, Heidelberg, Germany.
Bayer AG, Immune-Oncology DKFZ Joint Lab, Heidelberg, Germany.
Handb Exp Pharmacol. 2024;286:83-95. doi: 10.1007/164_2024_726.
In 2009, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the biopharmaceutical company Bayer AG initiated an academic-industry co-discovery collaboration. The partners combined their expertise in tumor biology and drug discovery to identify and validate novel targets for cancer treatment. In the early phase of the Alliance, the focus was on target identification and validation projects. Over time, both partners realized that they could also successfully collaborate on later stages of drug discovery. As a result over the past few years, and following several contract extensions, the two partners have collaborated on several late-stage drug discovery projects. This has resulted in the achievement of several drug discovery milestones and the initiation of early clinical trials, the most recent in 2022. This success has been possible thanks to both partners' understanding of each other's needs and challenges. They jointly developed solutions to issues such as the intrinsic potential conflict of early publishing versus patent protection. Both partners also appreciated the risks involved in some of the experiments, such as starting a joint laboratory for immune-therapy with scientists from both parties working bench-to-bench. Recently, despite these successes the partners decided to terminate the Alliance, as Bayer AG wants to focus its activities on the development of its late pipeline.
2009 年，德国癌症研究中心（DKFZ）和生物制药公司拜耳公司启动了一项学术-产业联合发现合作。合作伙伴将肿瘤生物学和药物发现方面的专业知识相结合，以确定和验证癌症治疗的新靶标。在联盟的早期阶段，重点是靶标识别和验证项目。随着时间的推移，双方都意识到他们也可以在药物发现的后期阶段成功合作。因此，在过去几年里，经过几次合同延期，双方合作开展了几个后期药物发现项目。这取得了几个药物发现的里程碑，并启动了早期临床试验，最近一次是在 2022 年。这种成功得益于双方对彼此需求和挑战的理解。他们共同制定了解决方案，以应对早期发表与专利保护之间固有冲突等问题。双方还认识到一些实验的风险，例如与双方的科学家一起建立一个免疫治疗联合实验室，进行面对面的合作。最近，尽管取得了这些成功，合作伙伴还是决定终止联盟，因为拜耳公司希望将其活动重点放在其后期管道的开发上。
