Collaborative approaches to anticancer drug discovery and development: a Cancer Research UK perspective

The pharmaceutical industry is under huge pressure to overhaul what is currently viewed as a highly inefficient operating model. Unacceptable levels of late-stage failure in clinical development remain a fundamental problem for the sector. Lack of efficacy is a major reason for candidate failure and a lack of understanding of disease biology is considered to be a key issue underpinning this problem. There has been a recent upsurge in interest from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to collaborate with academic institutions, with the latter viewed as being home to research teams with in-depth biological knowledge and translational research expertise. This article outlines models for collaboration in drug discovery and development being pursued by the research-based charity Cancer Research UK (CR-UK).