The first awards have been made in the Wellcome Trust's £91 million, five-year Seeding Drug Discovery technology transfer initiative, for projects tackling obesity, bacterial infections and cancer. Approximately £12m has been committed in this first round of funding.

Seeding Drug Discovery was launched in 2005 to fund the early stages of drug discovery, which are often considered too preliminary and high-risk to attract funding from venture capital or similar sources for commercial development. The initiative will support multidisciplinary teams of researchers and experienced industry advisers, who will work to find small-molecule-based therapeutic agents drawing on innovative research in medically important areas.

In the first round, Professor Steve Bloom and colleagues from the Division of Investigative Science at Imperial College London have been awarded funding to develop a long-acting therapeutic agent that can mimic the body's natural ability to suppress appetite as a way of tackling obesity. Professor Bloom's group also receives programme grant funding from the Trust to study the endocrinological and neuroendocrinological mechanisms that control appetite.

An award was made to Prolysis Ltd, a venture capital-backed company based in Oxfordshire, to develop next-generation antibacterial drugs against life-threatening, hospital-acquired and community-associated staphylococcal infections. Despite the alarming rise in antibiotic resistance, many large pharmaceutical companies have withdrawn from this therapeutic area because of unfavourable commercial opportunities.

Finally, Professor Jeremy Tavare and colleagues at the University of Bristol have been funded to optimise compounds to disrupt a pathway known to be relevant to cancer. Although they are working on an oncological target already the subject of pharmaceutical industry interest, they are focusing on a novel site of drug action outside the conventional ATP-binding site of the kinase. They hope to develop pre-clinical candidates that interfere with a specific protein–protein interaction in order to selectively block this pathway.

Seeding Drug Discovery is open to researchers at public or private institutions, including commercial companies, in the UK and Republic of Ireland. The next deadline for applications is in May 2007, and two rounds of awards will be made in each 12-month period.

Image credit: Colour-enhanced scanning electron micrograph of lyomyosarcoma cells. Y Nikas

See also

• New initiative boosts obesity, MRSA and cancer drug research (Press release, 15 January 2007)
• New antibacterials being developed to tackle MRSA superbug (Press release, 15 January 2007)
• Natural gut hormone offers hope for new obesity drug (Press release, 15 January 2007)
• Seeding Drug Discovery