Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) has formed a new collaboration with Beijing's Tsinghua University to develop drugs for novel targets associated with autoimmune disease and cancer. The University's Innovation Centre for Immune Therapy will do the research on the projects while BMS will have an option to license the candidates.

For Tsinghua, the deal further validates its credentials as an immunology institute and partner of choice for companies working in the field, while also giving it a way to translate its research into new drugs.

The collaboration is an expansion of an existing relationship between Bristol-Myers Squibb and Tsinghua University that began in 2012 which focused on autoimmune target discovery, structural biology research as well as the science of mapping the 3D protein structure of biological molecular targets.