The Chief Executive of the Cancer Therapeutics Cooperative Research Centre (CTx), Dr Warwick Tong, announced last week that a majority of its current partners have chosen to reinvest their share of the recent cash distribution from CTx back into the organisation.
In January 2016 CTx licensed its PRMT5 Project to MSD (known as Merck in the US and Canada) in a landmark deal and received over $14 million dollars as its share of the signature payment. Novel drugs arising from the Project will be developed and commercialised by Merck. Potential future milestone payments and royalties will also be shared within the partnership.
“Our 2013 application to the Department of Industry CRC Programme outlined the intent to actively secure reinvestment of funds from any commercialisation success back into our cancer drug development activities”, said Dr Tong. “To have this commitment from our partners is the validation and support we wanted. The more than $7 million will boost our ability to deliver new cancer drugs for adults and children”.
Professor Grant McArthur from Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Chair of the CTx Scientific Advisory Board commented, “CTx has made great use of its partnership network to deliver this project. The reinvestment is a very positive recognition by the partners that CTx will continue to provide benefits for patients and strengthen translational cancer research in Australia”.