AstraZeneca and Vanderbilt University have signed a research collaboration agreement to identify candidate drugs for treating psychosis and other neuropsychiatric symptoms associated with major brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

The partnership is the second academic collaboration signed by AstraZeneca’s Neuroscience Innovative Medicines Unit. The unit’s first academic deal, inked in July 2012, created a research alliance with Weill Cornell Medical College to study a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, the apolipoprotein E4 genotype.

P. Jeffrey Conn, director of the Vanderbilt center, says the partnership is ideal for advancing treatment of the devastating disorders. “Ultimately it takes the pharmaceutical industry to fully develop and market a drug,” he says. “Anything we can do to increase the probability of success and build a clear rationale for AstraZeneca to invest in clinical trials for this area of unmet medical need will have tremendous impact on patients and the economy.”

Under the terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca gains exclusively licensed rights to compounds developed by the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery that act on the M4 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor. Vanderbilt will receive an upfront payment of undisclosed value for the rights, research funding for two years, and milestones and royalties on global sales of products developed under the collaboration.

Recent studies have suggested that M4 compounds, developed under a program supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, may improve certain cognitive impairments and behavioral disturbances associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.

AstraZeneca has sought to push its neuroscience discovery research and early development work to a virtual model since the unit was established in February 2012, finding the best available external science and then sharing cost, risk, and reward with other research partners.