Radical process promises new drugs faster and cheaper

A radical process which could lead to the faster and cheaper development of new drugs to treat a range of diseases, is being developed at the University of Dundee.

Led by Jeff Williams, professor of developmental biology, the Dundee team are combining three new technologies - genetics, proteomics and genomics - and working with a soil microbe, to develop a genetic screening strategy that is powerful, rapid and generally applicable.

Scottish Enterprise have awarded £199,200 to the project through the Proof of Concept Fund which is designed to help export the best of Scotland's innovation from the lab into the global marketplace.

Professor Williams: "The idea of using our understanding of cell biology and biochemistry to identify drug targets and then designing drugs to influence them has become a major area of activity and success in developing new treatments. However for many important diseases identifying drug targets has been a hit and miss affair involving random screening of a panel of compounds. This new method of screening should remove the guesswork and speed up the process."

The University of Dundee scientists plan to use a living soil organism, Dictyolstelium, as a genetic screen. The single cell organism, has many of the properties of an animal cell but is a microbe that can be analysed genetically using extremely powerful techniques. Using the soil bug as the test organism, they will bombard it with different molecules to determine their target of action. Once vulnerable targets have been identified, the process of designing drugs to match them begins.

The process will be faster than using mammalian cells, it will also be significantly cheaper.

Professor Williams: "We are confident that by linking the new technologies we can create a process that will be faster and cheaper than current methods, and offer a highly competitive aid to drug design and development."/ends

Notes for Editors

1. The Proof of Concept Fund supports leading-edge technologies in Scotland's academic institutions and aims to help export innovation from the lab to the global marketplace.

   It was launched in 1999 as a three-year, £11m Fund; however, on the strength of its early successes and popularity, it has been trebled to £33m over a six-year period. Today, the Fund supports 82 groundbreaking projects worth £13m and has created 207 new jobs. It concentrates on early-stage ideas, which have typically reached patent level and could lead to the creation of new businesses, or licensing of innovative technologies. Successful bidders must demonstrate that their ideas have originality and true commercial potential.

   It is recognised that the projects supported are high risk and will generally take several years to become commercially viable investments; thus the Proof of Concept Fund represents a powerful commitment to encouraging Scottish innovation and exploiting research know-how to maximum effect.

   Further details on the Proof of Concept Fund and the projects that are currently supported can be found at: http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/proofofconceptfund

2. The University of Dundee's record of turning ideas and knowledge into products and services was recognised in the LaunchIT 2001 awards in London when the university was named the fastest developing for innovation and enterprise.Research income is £43m p.a. ranking third in Scotland and sixteenth in the UK - remarkable for a university of its size. Twenty five per cent of that research income comes from industry. A strong intellectual property portfolio contains more than 80 patents, 30 of which have been licensed. University of Dundee research has led to the formation of many high profile, high growth spin out companies serving international markets. These include Axis Shield, Cyclacel, DDS Medicines, Cypex, AMCET, Innov8ive Detection and Monitoring and CXR Biosciences Ltd.