23 January 2006

Chancellor Gordon Brown opens Drug Discovery Unit

The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, today performed the official opening of the Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee, a £13 million initiative to tackle some of the world’s most neglected diseases.

"This is a unit which gives hope to 30 million people in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa and India, and hope therefore for thousands of people who die unnecessarily and avoidably every year," said Mr Brown.

"The statement being made here today is that the expertise we have here at this great University is being used to help the poorest and neediest people of the world. The work that will be carried out in this unit is designed to save large numbers of lives for years to come.

"There are still diseases in the world which have been the subject of insufficient interest from the pharmaceutical companies. This unit, the only one of its kind in Europe, offers new hope and that is why the opening of it today is so important and truly pathbreaking."

The Chancellor also underlined the importance to the Scottish and local economy of life sciences.

"Remarkably 16% of the local economy is now based around the life sciences and biotechnology and we have an incredibly important life sciences cluster here, one matched in the UK only by Cambridge and London," said Mr Brown.

"The future of the Dundee economy is inextricably linked to what is going on at this University."

Mr Brown was joined on a tour of the Drug Discovery Unit’s laboratories by Sir Dominic Cadbury, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Wellcome Trust. The Trust last year made one of its largest donations - £8.1 million - to a team led by Professors Mike Ferguson and Alan Fairlamb to help establish the Drug Discovery Unit, which is the first facility of its kind in Europe.

The Unit is based within the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, a brand new building completed in August 2005 which is part of the University’s internationally respected School of Life Sciences.

The aim of the Unit is to translate basic research discoveries into candidate drugs ready for clinical trials. The diseases, which include African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease and leishmaniasis, are among the most neglected in the world. Despite the fact they affect millions of the world's poorest people, these diseases have attracted little or no interest from pharmaceutical companies.

"We are delighted to have the Chancellor here today to carry out the opening of a facility which is full of exciting possibilities," said Sir Alan Langlands, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University.

"This drug discovery unit at the University of Dundee offers a new model for tackling the world’s neglected diseases and with an excellent team in place we are confident of success. It adds to the core technologies in Dundee life sciences and marks a major new investment in medicinal chemistry."

Professor Alan Fairlamb said, "Our Drug Discovery for Tropical Diseases initiative will fill the gap left by the pharmaceutical industry and provide new candidate drugs for clinical trials in partnership with WHO, DNDi and industry.

"Some of the arsenic and antimony based drugs currently used have serious, even lethal, side effects. If we are to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals, then better, safer treatments are needed to break the vicious cycle of poverty and disease."

The Chancellor and Sir Dominic heard presentations from Sir Alan Langlands, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Sir Philip Cohen, Director of Research for the School of Life Sciences, and Professor Mike Ferguson, one of the lead scientists for the Drug Discovery Unit.

They visited the laboratories of Professor Julie Frearson, who supervises the Unit’s compound screening facility, and of Professor Ian Gilbert, who specializes in medicinal chemistry.

NOTES TO EDITORS

The University of Dundee team is renowned for their academic contributions to tropical disease research. Together, they integrate many disciplines directed towards the discovery of new therapies for tropical diseases. 76 scientists - spanning all the disciplines needed to go from biology to drug design, synthesis and testing - work in the Drug Discovery Unit.

There are over 140,000 reported deaths from African sleeping sickness, Chagas’ Disease and leishmaniasis each year, although it is generally agreed this figure is an underestimate because of the lack of medical reporting in many under-developed countries.

The parasites causing these diseases are protozoan microbes spread by blood-sucking insects, and afflict millions of people. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that;

• there are around 400,000 cases of tsetse fly-transmitted African sleeping sickness each year.
• more than 16 million people have Chagas' disease (endemic in South and Central America)
• more than 12 million have leishmaniasis (a range of diseases found throughout the tropics and sub-tropics).

At present no vaccines exist to prevent these debilitating and often lethal infections.

The drug discovery programme at the University of Dundee matches the goals of both the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (www.dndi.org) and the UNICEF-UNDP-World Bank-WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases.

The total project, including the construction and equipping of the new state-of-the-art laboratories, is expected to cost around £13 million over the next 5 years.

Funders include the Wellcome Trust, the Scottish Higher-Education Funding Council, The Wolfson Foundation, and the University itself.

For more information contact:

Roddy Isles,
Head of Press
University of Dundee
Tel: 01382 384910,
Email: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk