AstraZeneca and MRC to create new discovery center in Cambridge

Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) and the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) have entered into a collaboration aimed at better understanding the mechanisms of human disease. The collaboration will see the creation of a joint research facility at AstraZeneca’s new R&D center in the university city Cambridge, UK, where the company is also relocating its headquarters as part of a $2.5 billion restructuring, they announced this morning.

The AstraZeneca MRC UK Centre for Lead Discovery will sit within the new AstraZeneca site at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, due to be completed in 2016. It will see world class MRC-supported researchers working side-by-side with scientists in AstraZeneca’s high throughput screening group, identifying new methods to better understand a range of diseases and potential treatment options.

As part of the collaboration, which will run for an initial period of five years, academic researchers will benefit from unprecedented access to over two million molecules in AstraZeneca’s compound library, as well as its state-of-the-art high throughput screening facilities at the new site. Research proposals will be submitted to the MRC that will independently assess and select the best scientific proposals from a broad range of therapy areas and diseases. Some initial projects may commence as early as 2015, based at AstraZeneca’s existing research facilities.