Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, a  global pharmaceutical company, has announced a significant collaboration between Teva and the United Kingdom (UK) Government’s National Health Service National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure (NOCRI).

The two-part collaboration follows the creation of an important new research infrastructure model by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), and was announced in the presence of UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, Israel Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and Teva’s President and chief executive officer Erez Vigodman by Dr. Michael Hayden, Teva’s President of Global R&D and chief scientific officer, at a special UK-Israel Tech Hub at the British Embassy Israel event held at Teva’s Jerusalem site.

The UK is a well-established world-leader in high quality clinical research. However, recognising the need to constantly innovate and improve, NOCRI has created a novel model that streamlines the approach to undertaking clinical development in the UK. The new model provides a single point of entry into the UK healthcare system that cuts out the inherent complexities and inefficiencies of dealing with many and varied stakeholders within the combined medical and academic network on an individual and centre by centre basis.

Teva has an extensive clinical stage pipeline that is being developed globally and as part of this collaboration plans to spend approximately $20 million on conducting trials in the UK. This agreement enables Teva to benefit from the NIHR's new translational research infrastructure, their ability to set-up and deliver studies, and access to well characterised cohorts of patients from within the National Health Service.

The global cost of managing dementia currently exceeds $604 billion per year – approximately equivalent to the total GDP of Switzerland. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people living with dementia is set to treble, to 115 million, in less than 40 years. The recent G8 Dementia Summit in London, spearheaded by David Cameron, and attended by Dr. Hayden, has set out to tackle the issue of dementia, and Teva has now committed to a three-year dementia research program, providing funding of up to $1 million for early stage work in UK academic and medical centres. This work will be focused on understanding targets, mechanisms and new approaches to treatment of different causes and types of dementia. As part of the agreement, NOCRI will facilitate Teva’s access to the NIHR Biomedical Research Centres and Units in Dementia and Translational Research Partnership in Dementia. Teva will maintain the right to negotiate licenses to these targets.

“We are delighted to collaborate with NIHR on both clinical development and early dementia research. It will be a catalyst for innovation to take place within a healthcare system that is admired the world over,” said Dr. Michael Hayden. “The relationship between Teva, Israel and the UK is a long and fruitful one and I am proud that we can now add another example of us working together as partners for innovation and health.”

Prime Minister Cameron said, "This is an excellent area for Britain and Israel to collaborate on. The meaning of Teva is nature, and it is in the nature of Israelis and Brits to be entrepreneurial. Success in technology, innovation, and the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries and are a must if Israel and Britain are to compete in the global race."