ICR commended for plans to work with commercial partners

The ICR has been commended for its approach to transforming its discoveries into new treatments for people with cancer by working with industry.

We are one of only eight higher education institutions in the UK to be commended by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) for our overall strategy to commercialise our discoveries – which brings our researchers together with industry partners to take new cancer treatments into the clinic.

Our strategy for knowledge exchange – describing how we bring together researchers, companies, the public and patients – is led by our Enterprise Unit. As well as covering our industrial collaborations, it also includes some of our public engagement activities.

Read it in full on HEFCE’s website.

ICR commended for commitment and ambition

Our knowledge exchange strategy, which uses our overall research strategy as its foundation, was commended for elements including its commitment and ambition, its exploitation of linkages between research and teaching, its outward-facing stance and its focus on building on institutional and partner strengths.

HEFCE also praised our sound management approaches and our use of solid evidence.

The ICR’s Enterprise Unit, led by Dr Angela Kukula, is a pioneer of its type in UK academia – and helps the ICR regularly top UK and international league tables that measure good practice in knowledge exchange and the impact of research on society.

For example, we are the top-rated research institute in the UK for the impact of our research on society, as well as overall research excellence, in the definitive REF2014 rankings.

We are among the top 10 universities worldwide for the proportion of our papers published with industry, the only UK institution to feature in rankings of the world’s most innovative universities, and we ranked in the top five worldwide in a recent evaluation funded by the European Commission.

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Increase collaborations

Our new knowledge exchange strategy lays out our vision to embed advances in treatment into routine healthcare. Some examples of measures we aim to take over the next five years are:

• increase industrial collaborations
• drive adoption of new technologies
• increase our public engagement
• recognise the added value and urgency provided by early partnering with industry
• ensure ICR researchers have a good understanding of intellectual property and commercialisation

Dr Angela Kukula, Director of Enterprise at the ICR, said:

“We’re delighted with HEFCE’s assessment of our new strategy for knowledge exchange, which will build on our foundation as the UK’s leading academic centre for commercial partnerships to further strengthen our industry links, and build new collaborations.

“One of our strengths at the ICR is our focus on making the most effective collaborations and deals, with a diverse range of commercial and non-commercial partners, to take our research to patients.

“We take a flexible and pragmatic approach in order to make sure that people with cancer benefit as quickly as possible from our discoveries.”