The Wellcome Trust is committed to the principle of putting research into practice, ensuring that the enormous potential provided by rapid advances in biomedical research is realised.

Our Technology Transfer Division is one way in which we do this. Through its work we aim to maximise the impact of research innovations on health by facilitating their route to the marketplace. As the motivation is public good rather than financial return, we can fund in areas of unmet need. This also means that we can be bold and provide support for projects and ideas that are often considered too preliminary or high-risk to attract funding from venture capital or similar sources for commercial development.

Where funding gaps exist, in early-stage research and development, a catalyst is sometimes needed to stimulate new relationships and bring together research teams that would not usually interact. This is particularly the case when trying to bridge the gap between research taking place in academia and that taking place within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. This is what our Seeding Drug Discovery initiative aims to do. We hope to catalyse links and capitalise on the powerful resources that exist across the academic, pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.

This initiative has just made its first three awards, worth around £12 million, for projects tackling obesity, bacterial infections and cancer. These innovative projects are exploring problems in therapeutic areas deemed too risky for investment by the pharmaceutical industry at their current stage of development.

Professor Steve Bloom and colleagues at Imperial College London are exploring whether new long-acting therapeutic agents can be developed to mimic the body's natural ability to suppress appetite, in order to tackle obesity. A venture-capital-backed company, Prolysis Ltd, hopes to develop the next generation of antibacterial drugs for use against the ever-increasing rise of life-threatening staphylococcal infections. Lastly, Professor Jeremy Tavare at the University of Bristol will lead a team to explore compounds that can disrupt a molecular pathway known to be relevant to cancer.

Each of these awards will bring together multidisciplinary teams of people from academia and industry. I look forward to seeing these projects grow and bear fruit.

Mark Walport

Director of the Wellcome Trust