Sanford-Burnham, Mayo Clinic partner to expand and speed development of new drugs

To expand and speed the development of new drugs for its patients, Mayo Clinic has entered a formal collaboration with Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. Under the agreement, Mayo's discoveries of potential drug targets will be the basis for the development of new drug screening platforms. This will allow future work that focuses on high-throughput screening and medicinal chemistry at Sanford-Burnham facilities.

"The collaboration provides an avenue for Mayo scientists to rapidly translate basic science discoveries into screening platforms that will enable new drug discovery and a new paradigm in drug development," says Andrew Badley, M.D., Mayo Clinic's associate dean for research resources.

The agreement extends and expands aspects of a preliminary pilot program involving six projects in 2012, ranging from cancer to immunology to neurology studies. That effort was supported by Mayo Clinic's Center for Translational Science Activities, the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, the Mayo Center for Individualized Medicine, and the Mayo Center for Regenerative Medicine. The coming year will see an even broader scope of projects.

"We look forward to further engaging with our Mayo Clinic colleagues as we develop innovative screens to identify chemical compounds that modulate the activity of clinically relevant targets," says Michael Jackson, Ph.D., vice president of drug discovery and development at Sanford-Burnham. "If successful, these compounds will form the basis of completely novel 'first in class' therapies."