NIPTE: a multi-university partnership supporting academic drug development

•Academic partnership model for supporting and coordinating academic preclinical development.•Model for providing clinical supplies for academic clinical research.•Providing academic translational centers with access to infrastructure for developing clinical candidates.

The strategic goal of academic translational research is to accelerate translational science through the improvement and development of resources for moving discoveries across translational barriers through ‘first in humans’ studies. To achieve this goal, access to drug discovery resources and preclinical IND-enabling infrastructure is crucial. One potential approach of research institutions for coordinating preclinical development, based on a model from the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology and Education (NIPTE), can provide academic translational and medical centers with access to a wide variety of enabling infrastructure for developing small molecule clinical candidates in an efficient, cost-effective manner.