ABPI LINC

Using the database, academics and clinical researchers can more easily identify opportunities online for collaboration with the biopharmaceutical industry including funding opportunities, access to cutting-edge equipment, compounds and opportunities to build collaborative relationships.

The database also provides, for the first time, a publicly available and user-friendly central portal to see the different ways pharmaceutical companies are supporting open innovation, working with researchers across the UK both in hospitals and in universities.

The ABPI LINC database has been launched alongside a booklet of industry-academic case studies in the UK. Highlighting projects that are pushing the boundaries of medical science from better understanding diseases to clinical trials.

Experts say that the new initiative will mean even closer links between industry and academia, which is absolutely vital for carrying out the ground-breaking research needed for discovering and developing the medicines of the future.

It is hoped that the database will help to boost medical research in the long term. Academics at two of the UK's leading universities have projects features on the portal:

The database already has some 370 projects so far – ranging from funding opportunities for promising Dementia research, to an offer of 62 compounds available to academic scientists conducting preclinical research free of charge, plus free access to databases of drug-like bioactive compounds.

ABPI LINC will be routinely updated when companies offer new projects.

Users can view preclinical and clinical initiatives and search by compounds, funding, non-specific partnership, investigator-initiated studies, equipment and resources, collaboration facilitators and challenges – or a mix of these. The portal also allows people to search by company name to see what projects ABPI member companies offer.