The extended collaboration marks establishing a new BioMed X Institute in the US, near the historic Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut, and will focus on immunology and tissue engineering
AbbVie Bay Area campus, California. (Credit: AbbVie Inc.)
US-based biopharmaceutical company AbbVie and German biomedical research institute BioMed X have extended their existing research collaboration, to enable the first BioMed X Institute in the US.
The two parties previously collaborated for a joint research project on Alzheimer’s disease.
The extended collaboration marks establishing a new BioMed X Institute in the US, near the historic Yale University campus in in New Haven, Connecticut.
It will focus on immunology and tissue engineering, and will be embedded in the Yale University’s New Haven life sciences hub.
The new BioMed X Institute in the US will be managed by Mark Johnston, who recently joined the BioMed X family.
Johnston said: “My role is to synergize the BioMed X know-how with the invaluable local resources in New Haven to add a new dimension to the global BioMed X network.”
Yale Ventures managing director Josh Geballe said: “Yale is devoted to academic leadership as well as global strategic partnerships to foster innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit.
“We welcome BioMed X to our biosciences community and appreciate the opportunities this alliance ushers in, including cooperation with international industry partners and networking with the European biotech ecosystem.”
Established 10 years ago on the campus of University of Heidelberg, BioMed X operates at the interface between academia and industry.
The institute identifies the best early career academic scientists and deploys them to a BioMed X institute to collaborate with a pharmaceutical company on biomedical research.
Its extended partnership with AbbVie is focused on a new tissue engineering platform to produce complex human ex-vivo models to study human tissue inflammation.
AbbVie executive director and early immunology discovery head Timothy Radstake said: “AbbVie is encouraged by the potential of this collaboration with BioMed X to change the paradigm in drug discovery and expand the understanding of human disease biology.
BioMed X founder and managing director Christian Tidona said: “Extending our successful partnership with AbbVie to our new site in the US is a big milestone for our institute.”
Earlier this month, AbbVie has collaborated with Anima Biotech for discovering and developing mRNA biology modulators for three targets in oncology and immunology.