Microglial Biology in Neuroinflammatory Disease: Pharmaco-industrial Approach to Target Validation

Profound changes continue shaping scientific and business strategies in the pharmaceutical industry. Up until very recently, academic centers and corporations worked somewhat in isolation. However, over the last few years, two specific changes started to change this situation. On one hand, academic organizations became more engaged in operations previously conducted mainly in the industry, such as actual drug design and high-throughput drug screening. Capabilities were enhanced, both human and technical, and consolidation of available “know-how” led to the establishment of several academic centers capable of influencing and making key contributions to early drug discovery research. Simultaneously, the pharmaceutical industry recognized the need to enhance their sources of innovation and engage in hitherto mainly unexplored areas of research, such as neuroinflammation. In the process, previously insular organizations became more open to collaborating, exchanging information and building knowledge with external partners. Challenges remain to maximize the productivity of these interactions, and to benefit the collaborating partners, and ultimately society, by boosting the success of drug discovery. Developing a common language to communicate respective views is a key step towards enabling the partners to learn from each other and work together. In recent years our company has established a variety of successful collaborations with external partners. This chapter summarizes at a high level some of our current research processes, the learnings from our interactions with academic partners and our assessment of how to build strong academic-industry research partnerships.