It’s been a busy year here in the ICR’s Business and Innovation Office (BIO)! Here are just some of the things we’ve been excited about.
The year started with news that Socius and Aviva have joined the London Cancer Hub partnership in Sutton, south London. The London Cancer Hub aims to bring industry to work alongside us and enhance our partnerships, as well as building a thriving multidisciplinary research district.
There is space available now for start-up companies, or companies looking to expand, at the Innovation Gateway incubator now. Look out in the new year for more information on future homes for life-sciences companies, as well as exciting plans to regenerate the area through place-making developments led by Socius, and developments on the ICR’s estate we are working on with our partners at Studio Egret West.
New collaborations, new spinout company
We announced a new collaboration with techbio company Concr. Together with Concr and the University of Durham, we are using computational frameworks adopted from astrophysics to interlink disparate oncology data, with the aim of identifying and develop biomarkers of drug response.
Spring saw the announcement of seed funding for new company Kodiform Therapeutics, a spinout from the ICR and the University of Oxford. This exciting new company aims to exploit technology based on intracellular antibodies for cancer drug discovery, to open the way to tackle the world of hard-to-drug targets such as transcription factors.
We have several current research projects that could, with support from the right funder, become new companies. If you are a venture capital or other funder looking for opportunities to invest in spinout companies in oncology, contact [email protected] to find out more.
Drug approval
In July, UK regulatory body the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) approved the targeted breast cancer drug, capivasertib, for treating a subset of patients with advanced breast cancer, following approvals from regulators in the US, Europe and Japan.
The drug, now branded Truqap, was discovered by AstraZeneca subsequent to a collaboration with Astex Pharmaceuticals (and its collaboration with the ICR and Cancer Research Technology Limited) – and following a programme of research at the ICR exploring its target, AKT.
Professor Nicholas Turner, an ICR scientist who also works as a clinician at our hospital partner The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, led the AstraZeneca-sponsored phase III trial that led to its approval.
Entrepreneurial spirit
Also in the summer, our Above and Beyond annual staff awards were celebrating staff who demonstrate the ICR’s commitment to entrepreneurial spirit, as well as the importance of commercialisation in translating our discoveries into new treatments.
We held our latest Science Day – one of our in-person Partnering to Defeat Cancer scientific and networking events – in partnership with our long-time collaborators Elekta and Philips, bringing scientists from both companies together with some of our experts in medical physics to discuss the latest scientific ideas. To find out more about our future events, join our Connections email list.
Research facilities
We also finalised several new agreements with companies, including at The London Cancer Hub’s Innovation Gateway, on access to the ICR’s scientific equipment. These agreements are enabling customers to partner with us to use our high-quality facilities, for example in flow cytometry.
The end of July marks the end of our academic year – and the point at which we collect our data about our activities over the previous 12 months. Although many of our commercial agreements are confidential, the numbers were impressive this year: we made almost 250 commercial agreements with industry, 400 non-commercial agreements, and 150 clinical trial related agreements.
And in September, we were named amongst the UK’s best universities for commercialisation, partnerships, and public engagement.
Consultancy in oncology
In the autumn, we launched a new page on our website to promote the availability of some of our earlier-career group leaders for consultancy in oncology.
Consultancy is a great way for companies of all types to initiate new relationships with our scientists – as well as using their expertise to help develop their commercial products and ideas.
Our new web page promotes leaders with expertise in a wide range of scientific areas, and of scientific techniques.
New brain cancer trial
In October, we announced the launch of the 5G Platform trial – which is set to trial new treatments for glioma, guided by genomic testing. Look out in the new year for more news on expansions to this trial, which is set to enable companies to trial their drugs as potential new treatments for this brain cancer type – for which too few treatments are available, and for which there are too few trials.
Industry partnering
Also in October, the BIO team represented the ICR at one of the last of the year’s major international partnering conferences. Over the past year the team has met around 100 companies at events in the USA, Europe and Asia, to discuss possible partnerships in areas from cancer therapeutics – in cutting-edge areas of research such as protein degradation, new approaches in synthetic lethality, and RNA-based therapies – to potential licences for small molecules, biomarkers for precision medicine, medtech and diagnostics.
See our current partnering portfolio or contact [email protected] for more information on our capabilities, research interests, and collaboration and licensing opportunities.
Early trial results
As the year drew to a close, we heard exciting news from our partner Ellipses, which is sponsoring a trial of an investigational drug called EP0042 as a potential treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). Early trial results of the drug, which was discovered at the ICR and is now in a trial led by The Royal Marsden, have been promising so far – as shown in data presented by Ellipses at the major American Society for Haematology (ASH) conference.
EP0042 has already been granted orphan drug designation status by the US Food and Drug Authority, allowing some patients with AML to receive it in the USA, pending potential wider future approvals after larger trials.
New spinout
To round out the year, just before Christmas we announced the launch of Sentinal4D – the second ICR spinout company to be made public this year. Sentinal4D is an exciting new company bringing artificial intelligence to drug discovery and development, and we were delighted to see its launch bolstered by an early round of funding and the appointment of a highly experienced leadership team.
It's been a very busy year in the BIO – and these are just some of the things we’ve been thinking about this year. Keep an eye on the ICR website in 2025 for more on our work with industry – or sign up for our newsletter!