Midwest Strategic Pharma-Academic Research Consortium

The Strategic Pharma-Academic Research Consortium (SPARC), an organization to spark innovative collaborations in discovery and 'pre-competitive', disease target discovery stage between academic research institutions who are members of the NIH CTSA network and the biopharmaceutical industry. The consortium was established by 4 Midwestern CTSA Hubs as founding partners in 2014, along with two large Pharma companies located in the Midwest, Eli Lilly & Co and Takeda Pharmaceuticals. The consortium is housed in the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. SPARC is a platform for research that utilizes the unique strengths of academic and industry for basic discovery, target identification and testing tool molecule chemical biology and translational research. The vision is to establish public-private partnership for patient focused discoveries that generate greater knowledge and better approaches to next generation and targeted therapies. The intent is also to conduct patient data and samples towards understanding of human physiological traits of different diseases of interest. The current members include Indiana University, The Ohio State University, Northwestern University, University of Chicago and Washington University in Saint Louis, along with the two major pharmaceutical companies, Eli Lilly and Co. and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.