Bring your science to life with us.
Explore our partnership criteria and collaborate with us to help accelerate discovery and translate innovation into patient impact.
Working together to solve the toughest challenges
R&D Collaborations
Delivering scientific progress through collaboration
Bringing together bright minds from diverse disciplines enables new perspectives and collaborative problem-solving.
Collaboration takes many forms – from partnerships with academia to asset licensing agreements and acquisitions. They are central to achieving our goal of delivering the next generation of potentially life-changing therapies to the patients who need them most.
1,500+
Active academic collaborations driving innovative science and technology through the next generation of science leaders
50+
Countries involved in our collaborative network; our R&D presence reaches every continent
320 million
Patient lives impacted annually through medicines born from our collaborative science
25+
Innovation hubs uniting local knowledge with global expertise via strategic networks across the globe
Why are collaborations essential to R&D?
Working with universities, peers, and other companies unites diverse skills, data, and technologies. These collaborations foster knowledge sharing, help accelerate discovery and development, enable more rigorous testing, and work to unlock breakthroughs not achievable in isolation—helping turn scientific insights into potential treatments for patients worldwide.
Through business development and collaborations, we bring together the strongest science, technologies and expertise. Our goal is clear: to accelerate innovation and translate it into better outcomes for people everywhere.
Spotlight: collaboration in action
Explore a selection of our R&D collaborations highlighted below, showcasing how our work helps accelerate scientific innovation.
Unlocking the future of drug discovery with advances in AI
Our unique alliance with Stanford Medicine shows how industry and academia can work together to push the boundaries of pharmaceutical research.
Improving representation in our genomics research
We are founding members of Together for CHANGE – a long‑term initiative that seeks to create one of the largest African ancestry genomics databases.
Enabling drug discovery through CRISPR gene editing
Our partnerships— including the Functional Genomics Centre (with Cancer Research Horizons) and the Functional Genomics Screening Laboratory (with the Medical Research Council, Milner Therapeutics Institute and University of Cambridge) — apply CRISPR technologies and disease relevant models to investigate potential new drug targets in cancer and chronic disease.
Accelerating research through open innovation
Through our Open Innovation programme, we share our molecules, data, technologies and expertise with the scientific community to drive innovation and help advance drug discovery and development.
Accelerating cancer research with academic partners
Through our Partners of Choice network, we collaborate with 11 leading academic centers worldwide to accelerate progress toward our ambition of one day eliminating cancer as a cause of death. Together with top researchers, we deliver clinical trials, apply translational research, and generate strategic insights to better understand disease biology and deliver potentially life‑changing medicines to patients globally.
Advancing cell therapy with Gracell acquisition
Our acquisition of Gracell Biotechnologies is helping enhance our cell therapy capabilities and accelerate our efforts to bring the therapeutic potential of cell therapy across therapeutic areas to more patients around the globe.
Early imaging to track lung fibrosis and treatment response
In collaboration with Imperial College London, we’re testing a FAPI-PET tracer that highlights active lung fibrosis in people living with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The aim is to spot early changes that indicate disease progression and treatment effects, potentially helping clinicians and researchers make faster, better-informed decisions.
Building foundation models for oncology
We’re collaborating with Tempus and Pathos to create the largest foundation model built with de-identified oncology datasets—an AI model trained on vast medical data that can be fine-tuned and adapted to many tasks—and we’re enriching it with AstraZeneca’s data to reduce clinical bottlenecks such as trial matching and study design, helping medicines reach patients sooner.
Forming strong collaborations allows us to leverage our complementary scientific expertise to accelerate the discovery of novel targets, the development of innovative platforms and the delivery of next-generation medicines to patients.
Innovate with us
We welcome talent of all backgrounds to join us in working towards our goal of delivering the next generation of potentially life-changing medicines to the patients who need them most.
Veeva ID: Z4-80898
Date of preparation: August 2026