Wellcome Trust issues first grants to encourage drug discovery
pharmafile | January 19, 2007 | News story | Research and Development |
The first awards have been made in the Wellcome Trust's £91 million, five-year plan for novel drugs to tackle obesity, bacterial infections and cancer.
Imperial College, London, is one of the first recipients to receive funding. Professor Steve Bloom and his colleagues from the college's division of investigative science have been given £2.23 million to develop a long-acting therapeutic agent to suppress appetite.
Prolysis, an Oxford-based biotech company, has been awarded £3.48 million to create next-generation antibacterials effective against MRSA and other hospital and community-acquired staphylococcal superbugs.
Finally, Bristol University has been funded by £2.8 million to push forward a compound that blocks a protein pathway widely believed to play a part in the development of cancer.
The trust's Seeding Drug Discovery initiative (SDD) was launched in 2005 to fund the early stages of drug discovery, which are often considered too premature and high-risk to attract funding from venture capital or other sources for commercial development.
The next deadline for applications in the UK and the Republic of Ireland is May 2007 and two rounds of awards will be made in each 12-month period over the next five years.
Dr Lloyd Czaplewski, research director at Prolysis, said the Wellcome Trust's £3.5 million, 33-month award to his company could result in a new medicine being fast-tracked into clinical trials to beat the menace of bacterial superbugs.
He said: "The antibiotic we are developing is far more selective than those currently in use, targeting only staphylococcal infections. Other broad-spectrum antibiotics tend to kill the patient's natural infections, leaving them open to secondary infection by other pathogenic bacteria."
More than 30,000 deaths are caused by obesity in England alone every year. Imperial College's award to develop a gut hormone to fight obesity follows research which shows that, if released, the naturally occurring hormone can instruct the brain to stop eating.
Prof Bloom explained: "Developing a treatment based on natural appetite suppression, mimicking our body's response to being full, has the potential to be safe and effective. We believe that the hormone pancreatic polypeptide, may be the answer."
The Wellcome Trust is the largest independent charity in the UK and the second largest medical research charity in the world. It spends around £500 million each year, both in the UK and internationally, to fund innovative biomedical research.
