Abstract

Established in July 2015, the Crick-GSK Biomedical LinkLabs collaboration provides a unique opportunity for Francis Crick Institute and GSK scientists to work side-by-side on exploratory biology projects of relevance to human disease. The underlying vision of this industry-academia collaboration is to deliver impact through the combination of complementary skills, knowledge and resources, that the two organisations enable, to advance scientific frontiers and promote innovation in an open science setting. A key differentiator in our approach has been to enable Crick and GSK staff and post-doctoral scientists to work as embedded, integrated teams both at the Crick Institute in London and at GSK’s Stevenage site. LinkLabs projects have explored mechanisms in oncology, infectious diseases (TB and malaria) and host immune responses. Each project is underpinned by opportunities to develop innovative capabilities in chemical biology that will be of wider utility to the Crick, GSK and the broader scientific community.  Exploratory approaches using reactive fragment compounds, established through the collaboration, have seeded the development of a Systems Chemical Biology platform through an EPSRC-funded Prosperity Partnership project. The platform enables reactive fragment library screening in phenotypic models of human disease along with chemoproteomic annotation of the fragment library members to enable rapid tool molecule generation for tractable targets.  Built on open innovation, the resulting biomedical discoveries and research methodologies from the collaboration will be shared with the wider scientific community through joint publications.