Birmingham, Alabama is known for its industrial history, its role in the civil rights movement, and as a birthplace for famous Americans from Condoleezza Rice to Angela Davis. What Birmingham may be less known for is being a place where new cancer therapies are born.

 

Last week, Southern Research Institute in Birmingham said it had licensed the rights to 4’-Thio-Ara-C, also known as SR9025, to Virium Pharmaceuticals. The drug, which is being developed for certain types of leukemia as well as autoimmune diseases, has already completed two early-stage clinical trials.

 

Though Southern Research institute is involved in a broad range of research projects from energy to advanced engineering, about two thirds of its $75 million in grant and contract revenue is targeted at the life sciences. The institute conducts early-stage research through government grants, but also serves as a contract research organization for pharmaceutical clients performing pre-clinical work such as toxicology studies, lead optimization, and medicinal chemistry.

 

To date, the nonprofit institute has been responsible for the development of six cancer drugs that have come to market and, in addition to SR9025, the institute has developed six others that are in late-stage preclinical testing or early-stage clinical trials. Its entrepreneurial leanings have been shown in other ways besides its licensing activity. It sold its 2005 drug delivery spin-out Brookwood Pharmaceuticals to SurModics for $62 million in August.

 

Jack Secrist, president and CEO of the institute, is leading a charge at Southern Research to do more both with pharmaceutical and academic partners. As he reaches out to form research collaborations with universities and licensing deals with pharmaceutical companies, it shows the unique role nonprofit research organizations like the institute can play in fueling the early stage pharmaceutical pipeline while helping universities overcome challenges they face in translating their discoveries in the lab into product candidates for the industry.   

 

For the pharmaceutical industry, which is looking beyond its own labs to fill its pipeline, Southern Research hopes to step up its licensing activity and serve as a source of compounds ready for the clinic. For academic centers, which are looking to do more translational research to move discoveries from their labs and develop them to a stage where a pharmaceutical company would be willing to license the technology, the institute sees itself as an ideal partner. Its own culture is akin to an academic environment, but it has the tools such as high-throughput screening and expertise to perform the necessary pre-clinical work to advance products into the pharmaceutical pipeline.

 

“The landscape is changing. It’s changing from this model of the past where big pharma did most things themselves, to one where they are more dependent on finding success from outside,” said Secrist. “There is going to be much more active pursuit of university discoveries than there has been in the past. Universities are becoming much more astute in understanding what they have.”

 

A few years ago the institute entered into an agreement with the University of Alabama at Birmingham as part of an effort to move discoveries to the clinic rapidly. The agreement covers intellectual property issues broadly and allows the two institutions to put together teams for specific projects. Secrist said the institute is now trying to reach out to other universities to craft similar agreements.

 

“Our desire is to keep a stream of drugs flowing. We’ve done well over the years and there are many reasons for that,” he said. “We’ve worked hard, been in the right areas, and part of that is we’ve had a bit luck.”