MVA Ambassador Torsten Jepsen, responsible for the U.S. East Coast, played a key role in developing a new report by Copenhagen Business School (CBS), which examines the growing trend of pharmaceutical companies teaming up with universities to boost innovation and speed up drug discovery.

The report, entitled “Value and growth through new kinds of innovative cooperation and partnerships in Denmark”, looks at how exactly new and innovative collaboration models between universities and businesses contribute to innovation and thereby increase the potential for growth.

Torsten proposed and developed the project together with CBS and Bioneer in 2011. In addition to writing one of the chapters in the final report, he provided the project partners with information and access to contacts from leading industry-research collaborations in the world including Pfizers CTI, Broad Institute and Boston University. He also organized a research trip to Boston for the project partners.

Professor Christina D. Tvarnø from the Law Department at CBS led the project. She is very pleased with the results and contribution by the MVA Ambassador Program. “Torsten ensured us swift access to some of the key players in this area. This led to key insights about public-private partnerships within the pharmaceutical field, which helped us draw some of the conclusions in the report.”

Torsten and the other project partners presented the report during a conference hosted by CBS in early December, which attracted the attention of many different organizations in Medicon Valley and internationally including Dr. Robert Ford from the University of Dundee and Christopher Paul Milne from Tufts University.

“The conference was a great way to end this project. We’ve made some interesting findings, which I believe will enable pharmaceutical companies to develop even more successful partnerships with universities in Medicon Valley and elsewhere”, Torsten said.

The other project partners are the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at Copenhagen University, Bioneer A/S, Novo Nordisk A/S, H. Lundbeck A/S, LEO Pharma A/S and ALK Abelló A/S.

Source: MVA