posted 01/10/03

By Jeffrey Krasner, Globe Staff

Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd. of Japan will pay $13.7 million over three years to fund research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center looking at the molecular causes of metabolic diseases including diabetes and obesity, the hospital said yesterday.

The deal, one of the largest industry-sponsored research projects at a local teaching hospital in recent years, is intended to develop treatments for diabetes and obesity. Takeda, Japan's largest pharmaceutical firm, will have an exclusive option to negotiate licenses to any drug candidates developed. The agreement could be extended by two years with funding reaching $25 million.

The two organizations negotiated for more than two years to reach an agreement.

''This collaboration with Takeda is a critically important step in helping to fulfill a fundamental component of our medical center's mission,'' said Paul Levy, president and chief executive of Beth Israel Deaconess, in a statement.

Compared to many medical research projects, which bring together academics focused on the disease at hand, the Beth Israel Deaconess team cuts across several medical disciplines. Principal researchers include Dr. Barbara Hahn, chief of endocrinology; neurologist Joel Elmquist; genetic specialist Dr. Bradford Lowell; professor of medicine and trustee Lewis Cantley; and thyroid specialist Dr. Anthony Hollenberg.

''It's a real bang-up group,'' said Phil Smith, deputy director of the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, a major funder of research into diabetes. ''It's a real marriage between people of different backgrounds. We've invested significant amounts of money with all these investigators. This collaboration will accomplish in several years what could have taken 10 years. The $14 million invested in this project could save NIH several times that much.''

Several years ago, Beth Israel Deaconess had been seeking a partner for a big, center-wide research collaboration, but had been unable to negotiate a deal. Now, the teaching hospital is seeking smaller, more collaborative projects, as part of a broader shift in the way it conducts research.

''By organizing research around thematically linked areas and disease-related areas, you generate more funding, more corporate and philanthropic interest than the typical academic silo mentality,'' said Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, chief academic officer for Beth Israel Deaconess. Typically, Flier said, individual laboratories and departments in their individual ''silos'' compete for the same research dollars even though they're part of the same institution.

The Takeda research project is an example of the new approach that cuts across disciplines, he said. The research will be fully described in strategic plan that has been under development since last spring and should be completed within four months.

''If it were fully implemented and successful, this [type of research project] would repeat itself throughout the center,'' he said.

The project will include a $1 million investment in new research equipment, including mass spectrometers, devices for identifying different proteins. Takeda will also supply a large library of novel chemical compounds that could yield drug candidates.

Takeda, based in Osaka, Japan, is known in the United States for Prevacid, an over-the-counter heartburn medication.

Source: Boston Globe, p. C3.

January 2003 News Article Index