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Some news out of UK

AstraZeneca to help develop Imperial’s RNA technology

Bloomberg

AstraZeneca and an Imperial College London startup will work together to develop a potential next generation of messenger RNA technology to fight cancer and other diseases, seeing opportunities well beyond COVID-19.

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AstraZeneca will make a “sizable” investment in the company, called VaxEquity, and provide milestone payments of as much as $US195 million ($267 million), funding as many as 26 drug targets, Robin Shattock, the professor leading the research at Imperial, said in an interview. The pair plans to develop both therapies and vaccines, using an approach known as self-amplifying RNA.

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“We have had interest from other pharma partners, but I think what is interesting for us in terms of AstraZeneca is their wider interest in exploiting this technology, not just in the infectious disease space,” Shattock said.

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The UK partnership, focusing also on areas such as cancer and respiratory illnesses, follows the pharmaceutical company’s collaboration with the University of Oxford to develop a COVID-19 inoculation using a different technology.

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