Professor Udo Oppermann, Director of Laboratory Sciences at NDORMS, is the Scientific Director for Oxford in a new alliance between the University of Oxford and Bayer Healthcare.
This strategic research alliance in the area of gynaecological therapies is for an initial period of two years, but is open for extension to up to five years. The multi-target collaboration will focus on endometriosis and uterine fibroids with the goal of discovering and developing innovative treatment options for these diseases, which affect millions of women worldwide and are still poorly understood.
Professor Oppermann said: "Clearly novel approaches are required to better understand these devastating diseases and develop novel therapeutic concepts to treat endometriosis and uterine fibroids. Oxford, with its excellent translational approaches and departments can perfectly contribute to this challenging task."
Professor Andrew Hamilton, Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford commented: "This collaboration draws on the particular skill sets of each partner in the development of innovative new therapies that could benefit millions of women around the world, and shows Oxford's commitment to work jointly with industry to develop novel medicines".
Research projects will be jointly performed at the Bayer HealthCare RD Centre in Berlin, Germany, and at several University of Oxford centres and institutes participating in the alliance.
Target discovery and pre-clinical validation will be performed by the Target Discovery Institute under the lead of Professor Stefan Knapp together with the Botnar - Kennedy Tissue platform located at the Botnar Research Centre. Clinical expertise will be provided by the Oxford Endometriosis CaRe Centre, a collaboration between the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and the Nuffield Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, which is one of the leading centres in the world for clinical care and research in endometriosis.
Bayer HealthCare is the world leader in the field of hormonal contraception and a pioneer in women's healthcare focusing on innovations in contraception and gynaecological therapies.
"This new partnership with one of the world's leading institutions brings together the drug development expertise at Bayer with the disease and target expert knowledge at the University of Oxford," said Professor Andreas Busch, Member of the Bayer HealthCare Executive Committee and Head of Global Drug Discovery. "The collaboration provides us with the opportunity to jointly develop novel treatment options for women suffering from these debilitating diseases"
Under the terms of the agreement both parties will contribute innovative drug targets and high quality technology infrastructures. Furthermore, Bayer HealthCare and the University of Oxford will share responsibilities from basic research to early clinical trials in these two diseases.
For the full article, see University of Oxford and Bayer HealthCare join forces to develop innovative gynaecological treatments on the Medical Sciences Division website.