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 startups.
In an article posted on the AstraZeneca website, the company discusses its collaboration with programmes such as Accelerate Cambridge, and 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 startups have benefitted so far.
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.