Strategic Translation Award boosts neglected tropical disease research at the University of Dundee
7 March 2012
The goal of the collaboration is to develop safe and affordable treatments for neglected tropical diseases, including Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and African sleeping sickness. These diseases kill tens of thousands of people in low- and middle-income countries every year and are caused, in some cases, by parasites called kinetoplastids.
The Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee will work with GSK's Kinteoplastids Discovery Performance Unit at the Tres Cantos Medicines Development Campus in Spain, with the aim of delivering at least one treatment against one of the diseases in the next five years. The partnership is being supported by a Strategic Translation Award of £8.6 million from the Wellcome Trust.
Professor Alan Fairlamb, an international expert on parasite biochemistry based in the Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee, said: "These parasitic diseases, which afflict millions of people worldwide, are collectively responsible for about 150 000 deaths every year in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
"The drugs currently used to treat patients are often difficult to administer, have toxic side-effects and are not always effective due to drug resistance. Better, safer drugs are needed that are cheap and easy to administer, because most of these patients are living in poverty without access to hospitals or clinics."
Significant progress has been made in Dundee towards the development of a new treatment for African sleeping sickness in particular over the past five years, and there have been promising results in identifying potential treatments for leishmaniasis.
Professor Mike Ferguson said: "Currently, we have a portfolio of discovery projects in various stages of development in African sleeping sickness and visceral leishmaniasis. We have several types of compounds with promising activity in animal models. The next step is to chemically modify these molecules to find the optimal balance of drug-like properties for clinical trials."
Now the expert teams at Dundee and GSK will work together to expand their activities in an integrated, multidisciplinary effort to find effective treatments for the three diseases.
Professor Paul Wyatt, Head of the Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee, said: "Having an industry-experienced, multidisciplinary drug discovery team housed alongside world leaders in the biology of these parasites is a major strength of the Drug Discovery Unit and is rare in a UK university.
"We are very pleased to have GSK as a valued partner in the project. The support from the Wellcome Trust has enabled us to create a powerful team by combining DDU's and GSK's considerable expertise and infrastructure, to accelerate progress towards discovering new drugs for these terrible diseases. We have already forged a very productive partnership and look forward to an exciting and successful future."
The funding comes in addition to a recent award of £1.5 million by the Wellcome Trust to Professor Fairlamb to investigate Chagas disease.
Dr Ted Bianco, Director of Technology Transfer at the Wellcome Trust, said: "This significant award from the Wellcome Trust recognises the University's distinguished track record in the area of neglected tropical diseases and its strategic approach to translational research. The partnership with GSK is an exciting and timely development that brings together complementary skills from academia and industry. I applaud both parties for their commitment to global health."
Image: Trypanosoma brucei brucei parasites (the cause of sleeping sickness) in the procyclic phase. Credit: Gull Lab, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Wellcome Images.
