Surfacing the next generation of rare disease research and assets

Our Global Challenge programme aims to mobilise the academia-industry ecosystem to address global health and sustainability challenges with a clear demand from industry for technical solutions. Following successful campaigns on water pollution, sustainable plastics, the microbiome, Covid-19, and cancer, our latest Global Challenge will focus on rare diseases. 

Through this campaign, our aim is to start meaningful conversations that support the development of new rare disease therapies and diagnostic tools to be rolled out to patients across the globe.

How does the campaign work?

As part of this campaign, we are inviting our global academic network (which has embedded relationships in faculties and TTOs at 2,600+ universities and academic institutes) to share details of their latest commercial-facing rare diseases research and assets. All of the opportunities submitted to our Global Challenge campaign will be hosted on our online matchmaking platform, Connect, and behind every project is an academic team actively looking to start new industry partnerships to help progress, develop and commercialise their work.

Connect is completely free for companies to join to review the latest academic innovations (create an account). We don’t take any finders fees or success fees, and the conversations started through this campaign and our platforms are hosted exclusively between you and the academic partner.

Engage with our campaign partners

For this campaign, we will be running a series of virtual partnering events with rare disease experts across industry R&D, research commercialisation, and academia. They will each be presenting their partnering opportunities, technical challenges, and their approaches to university-industry collaboration.
 

What are industry’s top priorities in rare disease R&D?

Join virtual partnering events with our industry campaign partners Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, Ultragenyx, General Inception, and Sanofi. Register your free place today.
 

How can research platforms be leveraged to find and develop rare disease research and assets?

Join our virtual partnering event with our first-ever non-profit campaign partner, Global Genes. Through their RARE-X platform, Global Genes is building the largest collaborative patient-driven database for rare diseases globally. Get connected with Global Genes by signing up for their partnering event.
 

What’s at the cutting edge in rare disease academic research?

In July, leading academics from three different research institutes in our network will be sharing their latest research and an overview of their latest technology/asset portfolios as part of a virtual partnering event.
 

How to engage with opportunities submitted to the campaign:

1 – If you’re new to IN-PART: 

Join our partnering network and connect with the next generation of rare disease research and assets. 

Set up an account (this takes less than a minute) to view the opportunities on our Connect platform, alongside over 8,200 other live technologies from teams actively looking to partner with industry.

2 – If you already have an account on IN-PART’s matchmaking platform, Connect:

You can also update your keywords to get new innovations throughout the campaign (and after!) that align with your interests straight to your inbox. 

3 – Have your requirements proactively disseminated to our academic network

If you or your team are searching for specific rare disease research and assets let us know what you’re looking for and our team will send you a curated list of the most relevant technologies and assets submitted to the campaign. 

By completing this form, your R&D needs and priorities will be distributed to our extended academic network as a shareable PDF document.

View the full public listing of submissions to the campaign in our open research directory (to be published and updated weekly from the w/c 12th June 2023).

Why are we running this Global Challenge campaign?

Emerging as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, our Global Challenge programme works to leverage our two matchmaking platforms, Connect and Discover, to accelerate technical solutions to society’s greatest health and environmental challenges. 

We know from speaking with teams across our global pharma and biotech network that there is still a clear unmet need and demand from industry for new and improved treatments and diagnostic tools targeting rare diseases.

Innovations from academia are being uncovered that seek to address the R&D challenges and pain points of the biopharma industry, and to accelerate the development of new rare disease treatments and diagnostic tools. On our free matchmaking platform Connect, there are currently about 320 live assets and technologies from academic researchers currently seeking commercialisation partners.

Navigating this landscape, the campaign will aim to accelerate the development of new interventions to treat and detect rare diseases by surfacing the next generation of academic research and delivering these to companies working on aligned solutions.

For more information on our Global Challenges campaigns, visit our Global Challenges FAQ. 

If you have questions or want to know more about this campaign, please share your queries to submissions@in-part.co.uk and a member of our team will get back to you promptly.

Campaign partners

This campaign is being run with support from:

Labiotech.eu is the leading digital media covering the global biotech industry. Over 150,000 monthly visitors use it to keep an eye on the business and innovations in biotechnology. Learn more.

ASTP are Europe’s premier association of knowledge transfer professionals whose work aims to improve the quality of impact that public research has on the economy and society. Learn more.

PraxisAuril are a world-leading professional association for knowledge exchange practitioners, whose network includes 5000+ KE professionals. Learn more.

BIA: The BioIndustry Association (BIA) is the voice of the innovative life sciences and biotech industry, enabling and connecting the UK ecosystem so that businesses can start, grow and deliver world-changing innovation. Learn more.

BIA’s Rare Disease Industry Group (RDIG) represents a group of innovative bioscience companies that specialise in treatments for rare and ultra-rare diseases. Learn more. 

Healx is a global AI-powered techbio company redesigning drug discovery to develop treatments for rare diseases at scale. Learn more. 

Written by Anabel Bennett. Edited by Joseph Ferner and Alex Stockham.

Copyrights reserved unless otherwise agreed – IN-PART Publishing Ltd., 2023: ‘Surfacing the next generation of rare disease research and assets.’

About IN-PART:

We believe brilliant connections can solve real-world problems. We match research pioneers from academia with decision-makers in industry sectors striving for a greater positive impact.

Our goal is to enable connections from around the world to match academic research with industry on a level playing field. Through our intelligent, matchmaking platform we showcase leading university innovations and connect academics with an international community of decision-makers in industry, creating meaningful dialogue and partnership.

Connect, a digital partnering platform for university-industry collaboration.

250+ universities and research institutes around the world currently showcase their research and innovation on IN-PART to find new collaboration partners in industry. R&D teams get free access to the platform (create an account here). There are no hidden costs and we don’t claim downstream success fees.

Discover, a bespoke scouting service for open innovation.

Through Discover, corporate R&D teams can leverage our extended academic network, which reaches multiple teams across 1,500+ universities and research institutes worldwide. In response to a specific research requirement or challenge, Discover enables R&D teams to identify new opportunities for commercialisation or to solicit proposals for new research.

Interested in speaking with our Discover team? Request a demo |  TTO or academic? Sign-up for weekly Discover emails.