Fostering innovation with external partnerships and collaborations 

Our Focus Areas 

New ideas. New science. This is what our Business Development and Licensing (BD&L), Funding Unit and External Research teams are looking for in our search to discover the next generation of breakthrough medicines. In Boehringer Ingelheim RCV, our partnering activities are centered around oncology research and Research Beyond Borders. 

Oncology research  

We focus on the discovery and development of new and better medicines to treat cancer. Working together with our collaboration partners, Boehringer Ingelheim is leading the way in the search for novel therapeutic concepts, biomarkers, drug candidates and treatment modalities in oncology and cancer immunology and smart combination of both approaches. We also explore innovative experimental and computational approaches that help us to accelerate our drug discovery portfolio.  

Besides the scientific collaborations highlighted in our Science Focus pages, we established long-term collaborations within the frame of the Christian Doppler Laboratories, which are established at universities and research institutions via a research unit with fixed terms. We further collaborate with research groups at medical institutions. For instance, together with the Medical University Vienna, we characterize the human tumor microenvironment in selected indications, such as colorectal cancer and the response of drugs in the respective model systems of the human tumor microenvironment. 

We also established partnerships with biotech companies as part of Boehringer Ingelheim’s long-term strategy to provide first-in-class breakthrough therapies for cancer patients. For instance, transcription factors are central regulators of gene expression that are commonly deregulated in cancer and have emerged as a promising class of therapeutic targets. In 2022, we established a three-year collaboration and license agreement with Quantro Therapeutics, which developed a proprietary QUANTROseq® Transcriptional Fingerprint technology for the identification of inhibitors of cancer-associated transcription factors. A key milestone in this joint program was accomplished in June 2024, with the successful identification of high-quality hits for a previously undruggable transcription factor. Furthermore, in 2024 we initiated a long-term partnership with CBmed (Graz, Austria), a leading public-private partnership for translational medicine. This partnership will enable us to identify and validate biomarkers for projects across its growing cancer pipeline to support early proof of therapeutic effect, identification of new indications and patient selection. 

Research Beyond Borders  

We explore new frontiers in science and technology, outside our therapeutic areas, to anticipate future trends that complement our research strategy. Research Beyond Borders (RBB) acts as the Company’s ‘radar’ for the next big wave of innovation. The RBB in RCV is exploring emerging science and technologies and collaboration with the external scientific community is key. We are particularly interested in advancing drug discovery in areas of high unmet medical need, or where existing therapies are limited in efficacy, acceptability or applicability.