Pfizer blazes new research path with university deal

Taking a page from the biotech playbook, Pfizer has just inked a three-year, $9.5 million research collaboration pact with the University of California, San Francisco. The money will be used to fund early scientific work into new therapies and devices.

"We're looking for science at the grassroots level," Pfizer's Corey Goodman told the San Francisco Chronicle. Goodman, who's worked at UC San Francisco as well as Stanford and Berkeley, was recently hired by Pfizer to run its Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center.

It's not unusual for a drug company to fund university research work. But university officials note that the arrangement is usually very narrowly defined around a project of particular interest. Pfizer, though, is taking a different tack, opening itself up to proposals from the researchers as a way of ginning fresh ideas.

- check out the article in the San Francisco Chronicle

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