Objective

Cancer Research UK Therapeutic Discovery Laboratories (CRUK-TDL) capitalises on the breadth of CRUK-funded science with the goal of translating world class research to maximise patient benefit. Based in London and Cambridge, we have more than 90 scientists and discovery capability to take projects from target ID to pre-clinical candidate. Our sole focus is to design, build and run academic-industry alliances focused on themed areas of cancer biology. Our current areas of focus are immuno-oncology, DNA damage response, protein homeostasis and tumour cell polarity. The DUB (deubiqutinase) alliance is a representative alliance led by CRUK-TDL and FORMA Therapeutics, in collaboration with 4 academic centres, which focuses on the development of highly specific deubiquitinase (DUB) small-molecule inhibitors. The DUB alliance has successfully developed a novel series of potent and highly selective ‘first-in-class’ USP7 inhibitors using structure-based design, thereby exemplifying the team science approach to academic-industry drug discovery alliances.