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Boehringer Ingelheim announces IBD research partnership with four major scientific institutions
Boehringer Ingelheim today announced it has partnered with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Massachusetts General Hospital, Scripps Research Institute and Weill Cornell Medicine in an effort to speed research and development of novel therapeutic targets and biomarkers in inflammatory bowel disease.
“Academia-industry collaborations are an extraordinarily effective way to advance research and we recognize the importance of joining forces with leading experts to effectively develop innovative therapies,” Clive Wood, senior corporate vice president of discovery research at Boehringer Ingelheim, said in a press release. “We must gain a better understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the onset and development of IBD-related diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. With these collaborations, we aim to transform the treatment of immune diseases to ultimately improve lives of patients and those who care for them.”
The company will provide scientific and technology support and research funding to its partners, and aims to help speed research and facilitate information sharing, according to the press release. Its collaboration with Mount Sinai researchers, including Sergio Lira, MD, PhD, Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, and Andrea Cerutti, MD, PhD, will focus on IBD-specific adaptive and innate immune response mechanisms. “This research is expected to provide new insights into IBD pathogenesis and offers unique opportunities for target discovery and biomarker validation,” according to the press release.
The company’s ongoing collaboration with Frederick Ausubel, MD, PhD, from Massachusetts General Hospital, aims to utilize chemical and genetic screening techniques to discover mechanisms at the host-environment interface that are compromised in IBD patients.
Its partnership with Dennis Wolan, PhD, and Andrew Su, MD, from Scripps Research Institute, focuses on the role of certain bacterial enzymes in the development of ulcerative colitis, and will utilize “biophysical, proteomic and chemical biology methods to identify new protein targets involved in the pathology of ulcerative colitis,” according to the release.
Finally, the company’s partnership with David Artis, PhD, and Gregory Sonnenberg, PhD, from the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in IBD at Weill Cornell Medicine, “will jointly pursue an integrated pre-clinical and translational research program related to certain defined cellular processes and targets that regulate the maintenance of the gut mucosal barrier in healthy and IBD-affected patients,” with the goal of discovering and validating new therapeutic modalities and biomarkers, according to the release.
Disclosures: Wood reports he is an employee of Boehringer Ingelheim.