Biogen Joins Target Validation Group

The Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation (CTTV),a pioneering public-private collaboration to improve the success rate for discovering new medicines, has welcomed new member Biogen. Originally formed by GSK, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the CTTV uses advances in genetic research and computational biology to help scientists with target validation, a key initial phase of drug discovery.

“We are committed to advancing evidence-based target discovery and opening up the field for researchers to create innovative methods and tools to accelerate the development of new medicines,” says Sally John, vice president, Computational Biology & Genomics at Biogen. “Being part of the CTTV helps us realise this vision and provides a practical, harmonised way to share data with the scientific community.”

Philip Ma, Vice President, Digital Health Technology & Data Sciences at Biogen, adds: “The importance of accessing and managing searchable, structured data is critical to sharing knowledge on target validation. We look forward to combining our expertise in data sciences with the leading capabilities of GSK, the Sanger Institute and EMBL-EBI.”

Covering all aspects of human health and disease the CTTV’s new Target Validation Platform has had over 9000 visits since its launch in December 2015; new interest from companies and academic institutions is welcomed.

 “The CTTV is proud to announce the addition of Biogen to our collaboration to improve the process of identifying and validating targets,” elaborates Jeffrey Barrett, CTTV Director. “The pre-competitive nature of CTTV is critical: the collaboration of our members allows us to make the most of commercial R&D practice while making the data and information available to everyone. It is truly exciting to apply so many different areas of expertise, from cell biology to large scale genome analysis, to the challenge of creating better medicines.”

For information visit www.targetvalidation.org