Sanford-Burnham to Join Pfizer Translational Network

(Research.gov)

Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in San Diego has agreed to participate with Pfizer Inc. in the pharmaceutical company’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI), a consortium of academic labs and institutes working in translational research. Sanford-Burnham joins university medical centers and institutes in Massachusetts, New York, San Francisco and San Diego, California.

Pfizer calls CTI an open-innovation partnering model designed to accelerate drug discovery and development. CTI projects combine Pfizer employees with basic and translational science investigators and doctoral candidates from academic medical centers and research institutes. The company says participating academic labs and principal investigators are incentivized through milestone payments, broad publishing rights, and the ability to use all intellectual property, joint or otherwise, in their research.

In the partnership with Sanford-Burnham, Pfizer is expected to offer Sanford-Burnham researchers access to select Pfizer compound libraries, proprietary screening methods, and antibody development technologies related to the investigators’ work. CTI funding will also support postdoctoral researchers at Sanford-Burnham.

Sanford-Burnham is the second institution in San Diego to take part on CTI. In August, University of California at San Diego joined the network, along with UC San Francisco — the first CTI participant — eight institutions in Massachusetts, and seven partners in New York.

Read more: UC San Diego Added to Pfizer Translational Network

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