Message from Professor Christina Mitchell, Vice President for Health and Professor Ross Coppel Deputy Dean Research
It is with great pleasure that we can announce a major new opportunity to build on our capabilities in biologics, especially in the therapeutic antibody space. CTI (a semi-independent subsidiary of Pfizer) has executed an agreement with Monash giving us access to very generous terms to translate some of our great basic research into new therapies.
CTI will invest significantly in early stage projects, sharing their expertise in developing new strategic assets. Under this option agreement CTI will fund the project through to the end of Phase 1, at which point Pfizer may step in and convert the option agreement to a full license. Further should CTI (or Pfizer) choose to terminate a joint research program, all assets developed under the agreement are made available for Monash via a research license. Projects selected for funding will support 1-2 post-docs for each project, a percentage of the PI’s salary, all supplies necessary for the project as well as indirect costs.
We would like to acknowledge the work of Charles MacKay, Paul Hertzog and the business development team in making this a success.
The Target Selection Process
CTI is looking for innovative, well-validated targets. It would be very unlikely to fund a project that is already being developed by another company or if they already had a similar therapeutic modality in development or in the market place. As such, we only expect 1-2 projects would be initially funded. The first call for submissions is expected to happen in mid-August, 2014, with the submission due 26th September. The plan is for three rounds of submission each year with deadlines expected in January, May and September. It is strongly recommended that anyone considering going through the submission process should discuss their project with one of their business development managers. All submissions should also be vetted by their head of school.
There are a number of areas that are specifically not of interest to Pfizer (and hence CTI): infectious disease, women’s health (including osteoporosis) and opthalmic diseases. The CTI has a broad interest in biologics, although it is expected that most funded projects will be therapeutic antibodies. They will not fund platform technologies without a lead therapeutic indication. Some background materials and the standard pre-submission form from CTI is attached for your consideration and for sharing with you colleagues.
Submission of a new project has three stages which are intended to be relatively painless but also to add value to the researcher(s) submitting to this process.
Phase 1 - a non-confidential submission which represents 2-3 pages of work (see attached). (process takes about 1 month).
Phase 2 - this is a detailed, confidential
Phase 3 - development of detailed project plan and costings. (takes about 1 month)
The value of the CTI relationship goes beyond just helping us to commercialise our research. It is expected that the relationship with CTI will continue the ongoing process of moving towards a research base that is capable of translational outputs and delivering impact to the broader community.
Christina Mitchell and Ross Coppel
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