The Rainwater Charitable Foundation, one of the largest independent funders of neurodegenerative disease research, has entered into a strategic collaborative partnership with the ALBORADA Drug Discovery Institute funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK (ARUK) at the University of Cambridge intended to accelerate the development of therapeutics that arise from discoveries made in academic labs sponsored by the Rainwater Foundation.
This collaboration will take discoveries made by principal investigators within the Tau Consortium through the so-called “valley of death” of drug discovery by applying an integrated drug discovery approach to advance these discoveries towards the clinic, Rainwater Foundation said in a news release.
This partnership will be a full collaboration between select Tau Consortium principal investigators, ALBORADA Drug Discovery Institute and Rainwater.
The news release said the deep knowledge in basic discovery biology and tauopathy biological mechanisms of Tau Consortium academic principal investigators will be complemented with the drug discovery expertise at the ALBORADA Drug Discovery Institute.
The institute brings best practice target validation, assay development and execution, computational chemistry, and ADME-supported medicinal chemistry. This partnership aims to bring these programs to the point where further partnerships can be established to enable clinical development and commercialization.
“This collaborative partnership is a significant step forward in our plans to bring potential treatments closer to the clinic for patients suffering from tauopathies,” said Leticia Toledo-Sherman, Ph.D., Senior Director of Drug Discovery for the Tau Consortium at the Rainwater Charitable Foundation. “The (ALBORADA Drug Discovery Institute) team combines deep understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and primary tauopathies research with critical drug discovery expertise in neurodegenerative diseases. This combination and their track record of bringing academic programs towards the clinic will be instrumental for the success of our therapeutic development efforts.”
“The identification of good quality validated drug discovery targets is a critical step in the drug discovery process,” said Dr John Skidmore, Chief Scientific Officer from the ALBORADA Drug Discovery Institute. “The (er Charitable Foundation’s) Tau Consortium program brings together the very best tauopathy researchers and is driving forward the discovery of these targets.”
He said the alliance presents “an exciting new opportunity to progress these new targets towards the clinic, developing new and much-needed treatments that can benefit patients.”