Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has highlighted its mentoring collaboration with the Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School as an innovative partnership that helps share expertise with the next generation of UK biotech start-ups.
In an article posted on the AstraZeneca website, the company discusses its collaboration with programmes such as Accelerate Cambridge and HRH The Duke of York’s Pitch@Palace initiative, a biennial competition for UK entrepreneurs. The Duke of York is patron of the Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge.
AstraZeneca says the opportunity to strengthen science-led partnerships was a major reason to move its global headquarters and a strategic R&D centre to Cambridge, in order to share in the city’s rich biotech ecosystem.
“However, we do not operate in an ecosystem of bioscience alone, but also of businesses – and it is this that has prompted very different type of partnership for AstraZeneca, with a number of business mentoring initiatives to support life science entrepreneurs,” the article says.
More than 60 people from AstraZeneca and its biologics research and development arm MedImmune have already participated in a life sciences collaboration with Accelerate Cambridge, and around 75 start-ups have benefitted so far, some of them also taking part in Pitch@Palace.
Hanadi Jabado, Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Centre, says in the article:
“When we first announced that AstraZeneca would be partnering with us, the enthusiastic response we received was incredible – we saw a huge surge in interest in the programme.”