Innovation Case Studies

Here on Campus we engage with the funding, R&D, service, and clinical communities to promote real-world utilization of the Sanger Institute’s technologies and resources.

The Institute has a proud heritage of achieving impact through rapid dissemination of its research findings, data and materials. In order that our cutting-edge research makes an impact on improving human health, further development, or translation, is often required. These translational approaches and activities vary on a case-by-case basis, and fall broadly into three types; spin-outs, licenses and collaborations.

 

Case Studies

The Global Fight Against Malaria

Despite much progress that has been made to battle the disease, it remains a significant global healthcare challenge. It is found in more than 100 countries mainly in tropical regions of the world, disproportionately affecting poor and vulnerable populations. The ethos at Sanger demands that infectious diseases, such as malaria, currently afflicting the developing world receive equal attention and resource to the diseases of affluence such as cancer and type 2 diabetes. To effectively tackle malaria, we need better vaccines, medicines and disease surveillance. At Sanger, we are working to address all three of these areas.

Supporting the World's Cancer Research Community

In 2013, the advancing genomic revolution was increasing both the rate of cancer mutational data available and the need of the cancer research community for an accurate, centralised database to aggregate and interrogate relevant data. For over a decade, COSMIC filled the role of organising and hosting quality data but was running the risk of not keeping pace with the exponential growth of available data that needed curating. The danger was, that over time this important resource could lose its relevance and deprive the cancer research community of a key source of up-to-date information.

Open Targets: pre-competitive insights for systematic drug target selection

Open Targets is a pre-competitive, public-private partnership based at the Wellcome Genome Campus, bridging the gap between academic research and pharmaceutical drug discovery. Founded in 2014 by the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and GSK, Open Targets aims to be a world leading centre transforming human target identification and prioritisation by combining groundbreaking experimental and computational approaches to enable systematic selection and validation of targets at scale.

Advancing Healthcare through Genomics

Based on pioneering research from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the UK NHS, Congenica, has a global footprint supporting leading international laboratories, academic medical centres, and biopharmaceutical companies and is the exclusive Clinical Decision Support partner for the NHS Genomic Medicine Service. In this case study, we share the story of this spinout from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, how it is advancing healthcare through genomics and the role of the Technology Translation Team, which made this possible.

Novel antibody therapeutics at Sanger’s first ever spin-out

The Wellcome Sanger Institute‘s first-ever spin-out, Kymab Ltd was acquired by Sanofi in 2021. Founded by the former Institute director and Sanger researcher, Allan Bradley, Kymab’s therapeutics are designed to modulate the immune system to overcome cancer immune tolerance and to treat autoimmune diseases. A great example of the power of innovation and technology translation. Want to know how this incredible science became a tool to fight diseases?

Elixir

Open data enables innovation in the bioinformatics industry. ELIXIR unites Europe’s leading life science organisations in managing and safeguarding the increasing volume of data being generated by publicly funded research. It coordinates, integrates and sustains bioinformatics resources across its member states and enables users in academia and industry to access services that are vital for their research.

Partner with Campus science

To find out more about how we may be able to collaborate or to ask one of our business development team to give a talk on commercialisation of scientific research, please get in touch.

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