BALTIMORE _ Johns Hopkins University scientists will get a $65 million infusion of funding from a Wall Street investment firm to boost early stage therapeutic research that also could help bring drugs and treatments to market.
Deerfield Management, a New York-based health-care-oriented investment management firm, will disburse the money over five years. More funding will be made available for research that shows strong commercial potential.
The collaboration will be called Bluefield Innovations.
The money will ease the burden on scientists and the university to find funding for research on new therapies. It's generally a many-years-long, complex and costly endeavor to research a therapy and bring it to market, and most candidates fail along the way.
A joint steering committee will identify projects that receive funding through the pre-clinical development process, or before human trials. That is the basic research and studies that help qualify a drug or therapy for those trials necessary to win government approval.
Drug candidates can be licensed to others or spun into new companies, which also could be funded by Deerfield.
In October, Deerfield also invested $50 million in collaboration with the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. That research partnership is aimed at solving complex, early stage treatment challenges related to unmet medical needs. The money also will fund early stage research and help support companies and other entities to develop the most promising projects.
Any profits from successful drugs or therapies funded in that collaboration will go to Deerfield's philanthropic arm to support health care projects for those in underserved communities, and healthcare innovation.
