The University of Oxford and GSK have announced a new partnership called the Experimental Medicine Collaboration (EMC), aimed at advancing research and treatment in immune mediated inflammatory diseases. The EMC will focus on integrating molecular science with clinical developments, allowing researchers to test multiple medicines across different cellular mechanisms at the same time.
Leadership for the collaboration will come from both institutions. Professor Christopher Buckley, Kennedy Trust Feldmann Maini Professor of Translational Medicine and Director of the Oxford Experimental Medicine Clinical Research Facility (EMCRF), will lead alongside Dr Eric Olson, Vice President and Head of Early Development Leaders at GSK.
GSK is providing a £10 million infrastructure grant to support the Oxford EMCRF. This facility is supported by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) and serves as a resource for early phase experimental medicine studies within Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division.
Dame Fiona Powrie, Director of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and Professor of Musculoskeletal Sciences at Oxford, said: "This exciting new collaboration represents the best of Oxford’s translational science in action. By partnering with GSK through the EMC, we aim to revolutionise how inflammatory diseases are studied and treated. This initiative brings together world-class expertise, cutting-edge facilities, and a bold approach to accelerate the transition from lab-based discovery to patient benefit."
Professor Christopher Buckley added: "The Experimental Medicine Collaboration with GSK enables us to rethink how we approach early-phase clinical studies. By focusing on experimental medicine trials in which we aim to establish cellular causality, we can de-risk drug development by understanding how therapies interact with disease at the cellular level. Our ability to run parallel studies across multiple diseases puts us in a unique position to drive forward precision treatments faster and more efficiently than ever before."
The partnership will combine GSK’s strengths in drug discovery, target validation, and clinical development with Oxford’s experience in developing new drug therapies.
The EMCRF involves close cooperation between University of Oxford researchers and staff from Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It also supports NIHR's Biomedical Research Centre strategy across 15 specialist research themes as key infrastructure for this collaboration.