A bit of history

Responding to an unmet academic need, Wolfgang Knecht and Roland Martin of the Neuroscience Center Zurich of ETH/UZH founded the Therapy Development Accelerator (TDA) of the UZH in 2017 to help researchers bridge the gap from academic discovery to solutions for patients. This was made possible with a considerable initial support from the foundation Baugarten Zürich, the RSB Stiftung, the Medical Faculty of the UZH, the Board of the UZH and the Neuroscience Center Zurich.

The original concept defined the TDA as a unit accompanying projects to the next major milestone in their development, such as pre-clinical proof-of-concept or first-in-human study. Because complexity, costs and risks of drug development can be quite challenging to researchers, the TDA provides specific and tailored support throughout the process. The unit consists of a group of experts in drug and business development from industry and academia and provides upcoming entrepreneurs with expertise and resources such as funding, project management and laboratory infrastructure.

In the first three years, more than 60 academic projects were analysed across all disciplines and around 20 projects received extensive professional support. TDA helped the investigators to explore further the potential of their discovery and take the first steps towards starting a translational project (or help them take the decision not to move forward if there was no potential)

In 2022, the TDA was renamed to Translational Medicine Accelerator (TMA) and integrated into the initiative University Medicine Zurich (UMZH).