December 7, 2010

Call for Proposals for UCSF-Pfizer Center for Therapeutic Innovation

UCSF is looking for proposals to be funded through its new partnership with Pfizer Inc., which aims to accelerate the translation of biomedical research into effective new medications and therapies for patients.

This expansive agreement, announced in November, represents up to $85 million in research support and milestone payments for UCSF over the next five years if the partnership leads to the development of significant new therapies for diseases with high unmet medical need. Read the news release.

UCSF is launching the first of what Pfizer hopes to be several Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) throughout the world.

“This is an innovative approach to industry partnerships and offers enormous benefits for our researchers,” says Jeff Bluestone, PhD, executive vice chancellor and provost. “Each of the individual projects will include milestone payments, broad publishing rights and the ability to use all intellectual property, joint or otherwise, for research purposes.”

UCSF anticipates initiating at least two to three new UCSF-CTI projects per year, up to 8 per year. Projects within the CTI are expected to identify novel molecules that can be targeted by biologics, captured at the earliest stage, and to build on the existing understanding on the new target biology, and translational medicine expertise that resides with the Principal Investigator (PI) and at UCSF.

Joint partnership with scientists at Pfizer will bring the drug discovery engine and proprietary technologies available at Pfizer to the project. The UCSF-CTI center will focus on biotherapeutic modalities (antibodies, peptides, proteins) across all therapeutic areas with the goal of rapid translation of a mechanism derived from preclinical work to the clinic.

UCSF will host two town hall meetings so that faculty can meet Tony Coyle from Pfizer, and learn more about the program. These meetings are scheduled as follows:

Mission Bay Campus: Tuesday, Dec. 14, 1 p.m., Rock Hall Auditorium, room 102
Parnassus Campus: Wednesday, Dec 15, 11 a.m., UCSF School of Nursing, room N 217

The UCSF-Pfzier Joint Steering Committee is making the first call for proposals with a targeted deadline of February 2011 for submission of the two- to three-page Phase I proposal.

For any questions, please contact Stephanie Robertson, interim program director, via email.

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