AP4 partnerships will work towards progress in the treatment of orphan cancers like lymphoma by examining the role of cancer-triggering genes. Courtesy of NCI. 1988.

Academic Public Private Partnership Program (AP4)

AP4 is DTP's latest effort to stimulate cancer intervention discovery in multidisciplinary, multi-institutional settings. The Program mandates and helps fund partnerships among academia, industry, nonprofit agencies, and government agencies. Its goals are to find novel, targeted drugs and other interventions for underserved diseases and to assemble the expertise required to reduce the time new interventions take to enter the clinic.

Impetus for AP4 came from progress review groups concerned with the need for a mechanism to assist new drug discovery and development. The thinking behind the initiative is that academic and nonprofit institutions could serve as AP4 centers and cultivate partnerships with industry, perhaps increasing the rate of new drug applications. The National Science Foundation's successful Industrial/University Cooperative Research Centers program, which stimulates industrial-academic partnerships, is the model for AP4.

Through AP4, a center director based in academia or a nonprofit organization assembles partners from pharmaceutical and biotech companies, other academic and nonprofit institutions, and government agencies. These partners not only add to the available research and disciplinary expertise, but also help fund the center.

AP4 offers several major advantages. First, it is a vehicle for participation by big pharmaceutical companies. Second, funding is for the center rather than for specific research, and governance is local. DTP plays an advisory role. The center director and steering committee can decide to terminate a research project that is not moving forward. Finally, centers have access to NCI development and clinical resources.

In 2004, one-year planning grants of $50,000 each were made to 14 possible center directors to assemble partners, complete the required cooperative agreements, and write an AP4 proposal. Successful applications will receive funding of $450,000 or $600,000 in direct costs for three years; the amount will be based on the level of partner funding. NIH funding will drop to 75% of the award amount in the fourth year and 50% in the fifth, with the goal that AP4 centers will find other funds to continue and that the partnerships formed will be long lasting and self-sustaining.

¹ Sausville E. Academic private public partnership program (AP4). Presentation. American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting. 11 July 2003. Washington, DC.

Links:

AP4 Handbook

AP4 poster (pdf)

“…Recent NDA filings tell us technology alone is not enough. It is essential that multidisciplinary and multi-institutional talents be partnered in this effort.”

—Edward Sausville, M.D., Ph.D., former Associate Director, DTP¹

AP4 will be a test case for NCI, an opportunity to evaluate partnerships between academia, nonprofit organizations, industry, and government. The overall goal of the partnerships will be to speed the translation of newly discovered cancer interventions to clinical trials. With AP4 success, a portion of NCI support for high-risk research eventually will shift away from government and to other partners.