Milner Therapeutics Institute Announces New Partnership with Elysium Health

CAMBRIDGE, England, March 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Elysium Health joins major pharmaceutical companies to invest in collaborative research with Cambridge academic scientists through the Milner Therapeutics Consortium 

The Milner Therapeutics Institute today announces Elysium Health as a partner to the Milner Therapeutics Consortium. Elysium Health has committed significant investment for collaborative projects with academic researchers in Cambridge over the next four years. This is the first major research investment outside the U.S. for the New York-based company. Together Elysium Health will work with University of Cambridge academic scientists and the Milner Therapeutics Institute to discover and develop preventative medicines from natural products.

Elysium Health will also join the Milner Therapeutics Institute Innovation Board to help define and solve some of the grand challenges in health today such as early intervention to prevent avoidable chronic diseases and maintaining health over extended lifespans. The funds will be used by Elysium Health to better understand ageing, cognitive health, metabolic health and general wellbeing to develop clinically validated products.

The Milner Therapeutics Institute has constructed a therapeutics ecosystem in Cambridge which match-makes between pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and researchers. The Consortium brings together the drug development capability of pharmaceutical companies with the know-how of entire academic institutions in Cambridge and has been specifically modelled to help facilitate the speedy exchange of resources and information between partners through a pre-signed agreement. Company partners are able to work individually with academics or through joint activities in order to help accelerate drug development. The Consortium's Innovation Board includes companies and academic partners and is responsible for overseeing the strategic direction, collective research funding and collaborative activities.

Commenting on the announcement, Prof Tony Kouzarides, founder and director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute said: "Elysium Health is a great addition to the Milner Therapeutics Consortium, broadening and complementing the knowledge of the companies we already work with. We will work closely with Elysium to help them discover more about the cellular processes that maintain our health and develop this knowledge into preventative healthcare strategies."

Professor Leonard Guarente, founder and chief scientist at Elysium Health who also serves as the director of the Glenn Laboratory for the Science of Aging at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added: "We are delighted to partner with Milner Therapeutics to further expand our understanding of the ageing process. At Elysium, we are committed to robust research in order to advance scientific breakthroughs and make them accessible to consumers."

The Consortium is seeking academic and industrial partners to work in all therapeutics areas. For further information on how to join the consortium, please contact info@milner.cam.ac.uk .

Notes to Editors: 

About Milner Therapeutics Institute 

The Milner Therapeutics Institute is a fully integrated Institute of the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge, UK. The Milner Therapeutics Consortium is the outreach programme of the Milner Therapeutics Institute and consists of major pharmaceutical companies, (Astex, AstraZeneca, Elysium Health, GlaxoSmithKline, Shionogi, Pfizer, MedImmune and Otsuka) and three academic centres (University of Cambridge, Babraham Institute and Sanger Institute). A Consortium agreement is in place to facilitate rapid exchange of reagents and information between partners in all therapeutic areas. Pharmaceutical partners use pre-allocated funds and the Consortium agreement to collaborate with scientists in the academic centres. The Consortium is the outreach program of the Milner Therapeutics Institute which is under construction on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and will open early in 2018.

New research collaborations as a result of the Consortium include AstraZeneca and Prof Carlos Caldas at the University of Cambridge to investigate how different sub-types of breast cancer respond to different treatments; and Astex and Dr Simon Cook at the Babraham Institute to investigate the significance of modulation of the ERK pathway in cell lines and consequences for cancer cell growth inhibition and adaptive resistance.

The Milner Institute also has an affiliated company partnership scheme to engage with small and medium size companies that are technology or service providers or have drug development pipelines themselves. There are 40 Affiliated companies including Charles River Laboratories, Amgen and Promega. For more information please see the website http://www.milner.cam.ac.uk.

About Elysium Health™

Elysium Health's™ mission is to solve the biggest challenges in health with science, to help people live healthier, longer lives. Working directly with the world's leading scientists and clinicians, Elysium Health™ translates advances in science and technology into effective, scientifically-sound products that help people manage their health in an actionable way (http://www.elysiumhealth.com ).

Contact

Kathryn Chapman, PhD
Executive Manager, Milner Therapeutics Institute
Email: Kathryn.chapman@milner.cam.ac.uk.

Victoria Davis
Elysium Health
Email: Victoria@ElysiumHealth.com

+44(0)1223-767111