SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 25, 2008 - Pfizer has
entered into a collaboration agreement with four major research
universities - University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB); Caltech;
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and University of
Massachusetts - and Entelos, a physiological modeling company, to
re-examine the regulatory mechanisms of human energy metabolism. Pfizer
is funding the three-year and $14 million Insulin Resistance Pathway
(IRP) Project to look at insulin signaling in adipose (fat) cells to
increase understanding of diabetes and obesity, inextricably linked
conditions that affect 7 percent of the U.S. population.
While diabetes has been the subject of intense study in the
academic community and pharmaceutical industry for nearly 50 years, the
diabetes and obesity medicines that have reached the market do not meet
the needs of many patients. Nearly 60% of patients do not respond
adequately to currently available drug therapies.
According to C. Preston Hensley, PhD, who will
oversee the IRP for Pfizer, knowledge uncovered in the IRP Project will
be applied to develop new drugs for the treatment of diabetes.
"The IRP project will be an interactive effort across Pfizer,"
said Dr. Hensley. "Scientists from Pfizer's laboratories in Groton,
Connecticut, where our diabetes and obesity research is centralized,
and from Pfizer Research Technology Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
will work directly with the external research teams to progress
research. We are very fortunate to be working with such a prestigious
team."
"What is most exciting and unique about this effort is that we
are combining distinct approaches to transform our picture of what
happens inside the cell in response to insulin," said Robert Garofalo,
PhD, senior Research Fellow from Pfizer's Cardiovascular, Metabolic and
Endocrine Diseases therapeutic area and lead Pfizer scientist on the
IRP. "Insulin actually initiates a three-dimensional network of
interconnected responses. Our goal is to understand this network and
how it changes in diseases like diabetes. Collaborating in this way
will help us to identify better possibilities for new treatments."
The first phase of the project will include an examination of
insulin signaling in adipose, or fat, cells. Researchers at Pfizer, MIT
and the University of Massachusetts will perform data collection and
analyses, which will then be fed to the computational groups at MIT,
Caltech and the University of California at Santa Barbara, led by Frank
Doyle, PhD, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Associate Director of
the UCSB-MIT-Caltech Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies.
"The IRP Project is a new paradigm in two respects," said Dr.
Doyle. "First, its methodology is a true departure from the way
fundamental research in human disease has been done and then applied to
the development of new therapies in the past. Second, this consortium
also represents a sea change in how industry and academia collaborate
in research and product development in the pharmaceutical area."
The conditions of the collaboration allow the academic
partners to publish and/or patent any discoveries made in the areas of
basic biology. If the first phase of the project proves successful, a
second, two-year phase will extend these studies to other
insulin-sensitive tissues - liver, muscle and possibly hypothalamic or
beta cells.
"We are tremendously excited about this partnership as it
represents just one of several leading relationships Pfizer has with
world-class academic, public-sector and private-sector institutions in
areas of emerging science that will help to shape our future in
biotherapeutics and bioinnovation," said Corey Goodman, PhD, president
of Pfizer's new Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation division. "We are
hopeful that the research gathered from this consortium will provide
new targets for this major unmet medical need and, ultimately, provide
patients with new, better ways to treat these conditions."
The Pfizer pipeline of new medicines contains a variety of
approaches to treat diabetes and obesity. Pfizer has seven compounds in
various stages of development for the treatment of these conditions,
including 3 compounds in phase I, 3 compounds in phase II and 1
compound in phase III.
Pfizer is the world's largest research-based biomedical and
pharmaceutical company. Every day, approximately 87,000 colleagues in
more than 150 countries work to discover, develop, manufacture and
deliver quality, safe and effective prescription medicines to patients.
In 2007, Pfizer invested more than $8 billion in research and
development.
Contact
Pfizer
Liz Power, 860-732-4987
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