Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and UniQuesthave formed an “open innovation” program to support academic research that holds promise of new therapeutic drugs.

Dr Dean Moss, chief executive officer of UniQuest – The University of Queensland’s research commercialization company – said the agreement would give researchers access to high-quality AstraZeneca compounds to investigate human mechanisms of disease and to explore the development of novel target therapies for areas of high unmet medical need.