Deerfield Management and Vanderbilt University announced today the launch of Ancora Innovation, LLC (“Ancora”), a Deerfield company that will support Vanderbilt’s innovative life science research and leverage Deerfield’s expertise in accelerating state-of-the-art drug development. Ancora will fund projects with the aim of changing the current paradigm of drug development and establishing novel therapeutics to cure life-altering diseases.
As part of Ancora, Deerfield will commit up to $65 million to support promising Vanderbilt life sciences research through the development process, provide operational support, and make additional capital investments into any spin-offs that emerge from Ancora projects. Previously, Deerfield has entered into similar arrangements with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as well as with Johns Hopkins University.
Profits from the Deerfield Healthcare Innovations Fund will be donated to the Deerfield Foundation and are expected to be directed towards projects that lack a commercial market but are necessary for medical innovation.
The selection and development of projects by Ancora will be managed through a joint operations committee comprising an equal number of Vanderbilt and Deerfield representatives, who will be responsible for identifying and establishing development plans for the advancement of promising Vanderbilt research programs. The projects that Ancora takes forward will be based on novel biology, targets or insights that have yet to be fully developed and have the ability to be disease-modifying or -curing.
“Vanderbilt has amassed unparalleled research and development capabilities in drug discovery, in part through forging unique collaborations with industry,” said Susan Wente, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt University. “Our collaboration with Deerfield will provide our researchers with the resources and support needed to translate biological insights into technologies that will have real impact on people’s lives.”
