Charles River Laboratories announces partnership with the Milner Therapeutics Institute and Consortium

Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (NYSE: CRL) announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with the Milner Therapeutics Institute and Consortium.

The Milner Therapeutics Institute aims to accelerate academic research by forging collaborative interactions between scientists and the pharmaceutical industry to deliver better therapies for patients. The outreach arm of the Institute, the Milner Therapeutics Consortium, connects academic scientists and institutions in Cambridge, U.K., with the pharmaceutical industry to develop the therapeutic potential of their research. The Consortium consists of four major pharmaceutical companies, Astex, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Shionogi, along with three academic centers, University of Cambridge, Babraham Institute, and Sanger Institute.

“Our partnership with the Milner Therapeutics Institute and Consortium further enables the collaboration between academics and pharmaceutical companies as they partner to investigate the therapeutic potential of their research,” said Emily Hickey, DVM, Ph.D., Corporate Senior Vice President, Global Discovery Services at Charles River. “Charles River has had great success partnering with academic consortia in the United States, and we look forward to the same success in our first major research collaboration in the United Kingdom.”

Through this partnership, the academic institutions in the Consortium will have access to Charles River’s early discovery and drug development resources and services to accelerate their early-stage drug development processes. Charles River is the first full-service, early-stage contract research organization (CRO) to partner with the Milner Therapeutics Institute and Consortium.

“We are excited to welcome Charles River as the newest partner to the Milner Therapeutics Institute,” said Tony Kouzarides, Founder and Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute and Consortium. “Charles River is uniquely positioned to help guide novel therapies from early discovery through safety testing. Their scientific expertise and wealth of industry knowledge will provide significant collaborative opportunities for the scientists in our program.”

The Milner Therapeutics Consortium was established in 2015 to act as a “match-making” service between pharmaceutical companies and researchers in Cambridge. The Consortium brings together the drug development capability of pharmaceutical companies with the discovery expertise of academic institutions in Cambridge and has been specifically modeled to facilitate the speedy exchange of resources and information between partners through a pre-signed agreement.