Deerfield has committed up to $130 million and additional scientific and operational support to the new collaboration to advance research coming out of Stanford faculty laboratories. Specifically, the collaboration will focus on drug prototypes emerging from Stanford's Innovative Medicines Accelerator (IMA), Stanford Medicine said.

The Porter Alliance for Innovative Medicines is a private company wholly owned by affiliates of Deerfield Management. Its objective is to fund projects that have uncovered novel therapeutics that have the potential to cure life-altering diseases. The collaboration will rely on a drug pipeline already established by Stanford's IMA and will be governed by a joint steering committee comprising equal representation from Deerfield and Stanford University.

The Porter Alliance connects Stanford to the broader biopharmaceutical industry and helps researchers understand the problems they need to solve to make transformative medicines, according to Stanford Medicine. A key partner in the collaboration is the IMA, which was established as part of Stanford's vision to be a more purposeful university by turning breakthrough discoveries into solutions for the world's most pressing problems.