REVIEW article
Front. Syst. Biol.
Sec. Systems Concepts, Theory and Policy in Biology and Medicine
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsysb.2025.1627214
This article is part of the Research TopicFOSBE 2024: Building the Future; Education and Innovation in Systems and Synthetic BiologyView all 3 articles
Bridging Academia and Industry: Advancing Systems Biology and QSP Education through AstraZeneca's Collaborative Partnerships
Provisionally accepted
- 1AstraZeneca (United Kingdom), London, United Kingdom
- 2AstraZeneca, Gaithersburg, United States
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Collaborations between industry leaders and academia are crucial for advancing systems biology education and training. This article explores opportunities for partnerships to enhance the educational landscape and develop a workforce skilled in systems modelling, particularly for quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) in drug development. Companies with a strong focus on innovation frequently explore collaborative ventures involving joint research, co-designed curricula, and specialized training programs. These partnerships provide students and researchers with insights into real-world applications of systems biology and QSP. We explicitly review success criteria for collaboration at MSc and PhD levels, discuss earlier pipeline considerations, and carefully balance the roles, incentives, and challenges for both academia and industry in collaborative ventures. Challenges in aligning academic and industry objectives exist, including resource allocation and intellectual property concerns. However, the importance of training skilled systems biologists for advancing drug discovery and development outweighs these challenges. The article concludes by highlighting successful industry-academia partnerships and offering recommendations for optimizing collaborations to meet the evolving needs of systems biology education and drive innovation in pharmaceutical research.
Keywords: Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP), Systems Biology, Industry academia collaboration, MIDD (model-informed drug development), Multidiscplinary, Education and training
Received: 12 May 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pichardo-Almarza and Kimko. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cesar Pichardo-Almarza, AstraZeneca (United Kingdom), London, United Kingdom
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