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The preclinical agreement gives Vanderbilt-Ingram investigators quick access to AstraZeneca's novel compounds – months, if not years, before they would be available otherwise. These compounds target specific points in biochemical pathways that were already a focus for Vanderbilt-Ingram. These research tools can be used to test hypotheses, learn more about the role of a particular molecule in cancer development and progression, and develop novel biomarkers that can assist the drug development process. This information may in turn fuel AstraZeneca's own discovery efforts.
"We're not studying drugs, we're using them as tools to study cancer biology, and in the process, inform and implement the clinical development of these drugs," Arteaga said.
The alliance involves team members who serve as "science leads" and "business leads" from the company and the cancer center. A major benefit of the alliance team is continual communication and regular face-to-face interaction among this core team and their colleagues.
These interactions are sparking new ideas and spin-off collaborations – a researcher not involved in the initial agreement is already planning a project with AstraZeneca. Jennifer Pietenpol, Ph.D., Vanderbilt-Ingram's associate director for basic science programs, noted that this scientist had not worked with an industry partner before. What he's learned during this interaction will be invaluable to developing future collaborations with this and other industry partners in the future, she said.
The agreement also provides for pilot projects to test very pioneering concepts, as well as important funding for career development for research fellows and junior faculty in addition to funding specific research initiatives.
The financial support, especially for high-risk projects that are not attractive to the typically risk-averse National Institutes of Health, was a major benefit. "It clearly is important for us to diversify our sources of research funding, through private support, corporate
sponsorship and technology transfer," said Kenneth Holroyd, M.D., assistant vice chancellor for Research at Vanderbilt Medical Center. "We want to develop closer ties with forward-thinking companies that are open to the kind of cutting-edge, high-risk science that occurs in academic medical centers."
Other Models of Partnership
The Vanderbilt-Ingram/AstraZeneca Master Agreement for preclinical research is only one type of partnership between academia and industry. There have been scores of ambitious industry-academic alliances over the past 20 years, not only in biomedical research but also in engineering, agriculture and other disciplines, according to the Government-Industry-Industry Research Roundtable (an initiative of the National Academies, which include the National Academy of Science and Institute of Medicine).
Some, including the Vanderbilt-Ingram/AstraZeneca clinical master agreement, provide a framework for patient treatment studies of the company's new drugs. "We're hopeful to make progress on all the little details that can get in the way," Strand said. "It will be to everyone's advantage – ours, Vanderbilt's and patients' – if we can streamline the process."
Still other alliances focus on drug discovery and development, including a recently announced partnership between Vanderbilt's Institute of Chemical Biology (VICB) and Amgen. That agreement, which focuses on neuroscience, provides funding for high-throughput screening of a vast number of compounds to test their ability to activate targets of interest. If promising leads are found, the company could decide to develop them, and Vanderbilt could continue to be involved with the research.
Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D., is director of the VICB and a senior Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center member, leading its A.B. Hancock Jr. Memorial Laboratory for Cancer Research. Marnett's hope is that similar industry relationships can be forged to identify exciting lead compounds for development as anti-cancer drugs.
"This kind of partnership allows you to extend what you do in the lab," Marnett said. "Not only do you get a chance to hit a home run, taking a basic discovery through to its translation into a clinical advance, you get to test your ideas."
All involved in these relationships note that while there must be direct benefits to both the academic and industry partners for the alliance to be successful, the ultimate beneficiary will be patients and families who may be affected by cancer tomorrow and beyond. Driving the Vanderbilt-Ingram/AstraZeneca Alliance, for example, is the mutual desire to design and conduct smarter clinical trials, based on close integration between preclinical and clinical research, in which treatments are tested in the right subset of patients and better therapies become available faster.
"The real measure of our success will be whether we're able to shorten the time to approval of new drugs and new combinations," Arteaga said. "The idea is to deliver these treatments to appropriately selected patients while sparing those patients in whom they are unlikely to work, avoiding wasted time and unnecessary side effects.
"In the end, the patients win." 
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