CDRD Ventures (CVI), the commercialization vehicle of the Canada-based Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD), and US-listed drugs maker Pfizer have extended an investment fund supporting projects with therapeutic potential stemming from academic discovery.
Through this collaboration, the two organisations will mutually-selected CVI research and development projects with the goal of commercializing them and resulting intellectual property.
In 2007, Pfizer Canada invested in a Pfizer-CDRD Innovation Fund to support academic commercialization and the latest partnership is an extension to the collaboration as the projects mature and go into CVI.
Natalie Dakers, executive president of CVI, said: “Pfizer was our pioneering industry partner making critical early investments in CDRD, thus enabling its evolution to become Canada’s national drug development and commercialization centre. By now extending Pfizer’s partnership into CVI (its third such industry partnership), we have further validated the CDRD/CVI model, and built a continuous and robust means to support the most exciting new health technologies through their full development cycle.”
John Helou, president of Pfizer Canada, added: “CDRD Ventures builds on the strength of hundreds of researchers and applies business discipline and scientific rigour to select promising technologies for development, giving Canada and British Columbia an edge towards a prosperous knowledge-based economy which is critical to ensuring Canada’s global competitiveness.”
Uwe Schoenbeck, chief scientific officer of external R&D innovation at Pfizer, said: “This partnership with CDRD Ventures is an important example of our focus on partnering globally to identify and advance potential therapies that can significantly improve patient lives.”