Translational medicine is at the heart of Amsterdam Neuroscience: we aim at making seminal contributions in understanding the functioning of the human brain and the peripheral nervous system, and their disorders. This is timely since the societal burden of brain disorders is immense, and should be considered as one of the 21st century top global health challenges.

Approach

Amsterdam Neuroscience will meet this challenge by seeking endurable partnerships with industry, to speed up the development of new therapies and diagnostics for patients suffering from a neurological disorder or mental illness.

We do this in particularly by building links between university labs and clinical practice, an objective supported by our so-called Industry Alliance Office (IAO) that helps our (teams of) principal investigators and clinicians to bridge the gap between academia and clinics on the one hand and biotech and pharma on the other hand.

The aim of such collaborations in our view is to transform the fundamental understanding of human biology and brain diseases into effective health measures. It is a highly interdisciplinary field that aims to combine research of universities, academic hospitals and biotech- and pharma-industry. Its goal is to accelerate discovery of disease mechanisms, identification of novel (drug) targets for intervention, and to pave the way towards drugs discovery and validation in clinical trials.

How it works

Shaping a business collaboration through the IAO in general follows a four-step process:

  1. What problem does a specific pharma or biotech company have?
  2. Does Amsterdam Neuroscience have a specific ‘solution’ to that problem?
  3. Does Amsterdam Neuroscience have experts in the field who are interested to collaborate?
  4. What is the business model for the collaboration?

Companies typically support research programs or projects through a master service research agreement. The process starts with a discussion between one or more Key Opinion Leaders of Amsterdam, IAO business developers, and the company’s scientific team to shape a project plan. Once a scope of work and budget are agreed upon, the IAO will work with the company to put a research agreement in place. In short:

  • IAO acts as system integrator, a one-stop-shop where custom research services and clinical trial guidance can be made available to industry.
  • The focus is on disease biology, preclinical proof-of-concept of an intervention, biomarker research, brain imaging, and clinical trials.
  • Access to large patient cohorts, in-house biobanks and the underlying infrastructures all located in the Amsterdam region.