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Scripps Advance to Fill Need for Speed in Pharma

The Scripps Research Institute has formed a new drug discovery company called Scripps Advance to fast-track the translation of early-stage biomedical research into clinical development and, ultimately, commercialization. The project’s first collaborator is Johnson & Johnson’s innovation center in Menlo Park — a move that exemplifies the pharma giant’s expanding presence locally.

Scripps Advance is “designed to combine the diversity and innovation of academic research enterprises with the expertise, infrastructure and capital of the private sector,” said Scott Forrest, vice president of business development at The Scripps Research Institute.

Scripps Advance will look both inside and outside of the research institute for projects to take forward, Forrest said, and will work with pharmaceutical companies to select and fund those projects. This collaboration structure, he said, should prove “uniquely effective.”

It has already begun collaborating with Atlas Ventures, a Cambridge, Mass.-based venture firm that invests in earliest-stage technology and life sciences companies. Scripps Advance and Atlas just launched a new company in Texas, called Padlock Therapeutics Inc., that was developed in the laboratories of TSRI investigators Paul Thompson and Kerri Mowen in collaboration with Scripps Florida’s high-throughput screening facility.

TSRI employs 3,000 people between its campuses in La Jolla and Jupiter, Fla. It is affiliated with the Scripps Translational Science Institute, which focuses on melding and translating genomic medicine and digital technology for real-time health monitoring. The Translational Science Institute is a collaboration among TSRI, Scripps Health and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Scripps Advance will operate independently of STSI.

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) has been building strong local roots in recent years. In January 2012, for example, it launched the Janssen Labs incubator in La Jolla. The incubator houses some 35 life sciences and technology startups, and has branches in San Francisco and Cambridge.

The former head of Janssen Labs, Diego Miralles, now leads the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center in Menlo Park.

Johnson & Johnson has also made some noteworthy acquisitions in San Diego, most recently buying Aragon Pharmaceuticals Inc. for about $1 billion.

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