IPGaia, Inc (IPG) has entered an agreement to collaborate with researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) to investigate promising targets for the development of new medicines.
The Master Collaborative Research and Development Agreement was signed in October 2023 by IPG and Cornell University, based in Ithaca, New York, USA. WCM-Q, based in Doha, is a location of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, which is part of Cornell University. The Master Agreement establishes a formal framework for the incorporation of promising drug target leads discovered at WCM-Q into IPG’s drug discovery platform.
The agreement enables WCM-Q to propose drug targets to IPG for identification and development of lead compounds or modalities with the goal of licensing clinical development candidates to pharmaceutical companies. IPG aims for the efficient creation of innovative medicines and hopes to contribute to solving global social issues by reducing healthcare costs and expanding access to medicine.
In an effort to fast-track the development of high-quality medicine that needs to be delivered to patients facing unmet medical needs, IPG will invite global academia, pharmaceutical companies, and other entities to submit promising drug leads. This is IPG’s eighth Master Agreement with academia around the world including two other US institutes, those being the University of California San Diego and La Jolla Institute for Immunology. The Master Agreement between IPG and WCM-Q is a very significant step toward the accelerated incorporation of drug discovery seeds from academia, in particular those that may benefit populations in Qatar and the wider region.
“This collaboration with IPG exemplifies WCM-Q’s commitment to driving innovation and advancing the frontiers of therapeutic development,” says Dr. Khaled Machaca, Ph.D., Senior Associate Dean for Research, Innovation and Commercialization at WCM-Q. “By working together, we aim to transform healthcare, improve patient outcomes, and make a lasting impact on local and global health. This agreement fits squarely within the vision of WCM-Q to advance our discovery pipeline toward medicines that would improve health outcomes.”
“One of our main objectives at Weill Cornell Medicine Enterprise Innovation is to identify and source critical resources, tools, and collaborations to aide our researchers in translating groundbreaking research into medical advances. We look forward to collaborating with IPG and benefiting from their drug development expertise and capabilities to advance novel cardio-metabolic therapeutics arising from research at WCM-Q,” says Dr. Lisa Placanica, Ph.D., CLP, Senior Managing Director for Center for Technology Licensing at Weill Cornell Medicine, which is part of Weill Cornell Medicine Enterprise Innovation.
Weill Cornell Medicine Enterprise Innovation enables the future of exceptional care through identifying, nurturing and partnering commercially viable and life-changing medical innovations. Enterprise Innovation offers Weill Cornell Medicine inventors and innovators at any stage of their journey educational programs, mentoring, asset development and maturation support, gap funding opportunities, and execution on intellectual property and business development/commercial outreach strategies to ensure transformation of their early-stage research ideas into products that impact patients.
“It is our great pleasure and honor to have this agreement with Cornell University which is one of the most prestigious institutes in the world,” said Yasu Yamaguchi, Ph.D., President and CEO of IPG states. “This enables IPG to access to promising drug discovery seeds and to create highly innovative medicines efficiently. In this sense, IPG moves forward to contributing to solve the global social issues such as high healthcare costs and to extend the healthy life expectancy.”
About IPG
IPG was established on October 26, 2021, as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Healthcare New Platform Fund where Whiz. Partners Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Atsushi Matsumura) has been the general partner. IPG will generate composition of matter patents for new chemical entities by conducting non-clinical research and development activities and make variety of transactions mainly with pharmaceutical companies. IPG has already concluded a comprehensive partnership agreement with Axcelead, Inc. and Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners, Inc. (https://ip-g.com/jp/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/0c91379ab46f05f47d691359e8e8c721.pdf). By collaborating among the parties to build a next stage drug discovery platform, it would be possible to generate high quality innovative pharmaceuticals in a shorter period of time and lower cost. As for the pharmaceutical industry, the trend of the horizontal division of labor business model would be more accelerating. IPG plays a role as a platformer for creating pre-clinical stage innovative new medicines.
About Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar
Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar is a partnership between Cornell University and Qatar Foundation. It offers a comprehensive six-year medical program leading to the Cornell University M.D. degree with teaching by Cornell and Weill Cornell faculty and by physicians at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Aspetar Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Hospital, the Primary Health Care Corporation, the Feto Maternal Center, and Sidra Medicine, who hold Weill Cornell appointments. Through its biomedical research program, WCM-Q is building a sustainable research community in Qatar while advancing basic science and clinical research. Through its medical college, WCM-Q seeks to provide the finest education possible for medical students, to improve health care both now and for future generations, and to provide high quality health care to the Qatari population.