The University of Glasgow has signed up to an ambitious new partnership designed to speed up the journey of life-changing treatments from the laboratory to the patients who need them.
The university is one of five partners — alongside pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality, King's College London and HSBC — to put its name to a Memorandum of Understanding signed in Shanghai last month.
The agreement sets out a plan to pool each partner's strengths to tackle some of the biggest challenges in global healthcare, with a particular focus on three fast-moving fields: gene and cell therapy, synthetic biology and medical artificial intelligence.
What the partnership means for Glasgow
Under the terms of the agreement, Glasgow and King's College London will explore how best to link up with Shanghai's clinical and research networks. The aim is to open doors for collaborative research and to help promising discoveries make the leap into real-world treatments.
For Glasgow's research community, that means a direct line into one of the world's largest life sciences ecosystems — and a chance to test ideas against a far bigger pool of clinical expertise and patient need.
Professor Carl Goodyear, Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Glasgow, said the city's researchers had plenty to offer.
"We are delighted to join this collaboration, which promises to ensure the focus of innovation remains on the needs of patients around the world," he said. "Researchers at the University of Glasgow will bring world-class clinical and translational skills to the partnership, and together with other collaborators will help deliver health-focused innovations."
From lab bench to bedside
The three priority areas are not abstract. Gene and cell therapy involves repairing or replacing faulty genes to treat conditions that were once considered untreatable. Synthetic biology redesigns biological systems to do useful new jobs, from manufacturing medicines to detecting disease. Medical AI uses computing power to spot patterns in scans and data that can speed up diagnosis and tailor treatment.
The partnership is built on a simple division of labour. The universities will supply the clinical and research muscle, while AstraZeneca and HSBC will use their expertise and networks to help promising Shanghai start-ups and scale-ups grow and reach international markets.
Steve Rees, Head of Discovery Sciences at AstraZeneca, said collaboration was the quickest route to results.
"Working in collaboration benefits everyone as we accelerate research and the delivery of innovation with the common goal of advancing global public health," he said. "This collaboration brings together leaders in research, innovation and industry to help transform healthcare and deliver potentially life-changing medicines."
Shaun Grady, Chair of AstraZeneca UK, said the agreement followed the Prime Minister's visit to China in January and reflected a wider warming of UK-China scientific ties.
"It is really exciting to be looking in more detail at the opportunities for joint working and collaboration between the UK and China," he said.
The Memorandum of Understanding is an exploratory first step rather than a finished programme, and the partners will now work out the practical detail. But for Glasgow, it places the university firmly in the conversation about where the next generation of medicines will come from.
