DDU and GSK receive the Biochemical Society Industry and Academic Collaboration Award
This week Dr Manu De Rycker accepted the Biochemical Society Industry and Academic Collaboration Award 2024 on behalf of the Drug Discovery Unit and GSK Kinetoplastid team.
In 2011 the Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at the University of Dundee and GSK Global Health started a formal collaboration to discover and develop new drug candidates for the neglected tropical diseases leishmaniasis and Chagas disease. The group was initially supported by a 5-year award from Wellcome, followed by several further Wellcome awards as well as significant in-kind contributions from GSK. The collaboration covers the entire pre-clinical drug discovery pipeline, from hit discovery to pre-clinical candidate selection. The team consists of over 20 scientists in the DDU and at GSK global health. Access to knowhow and resource from across the company is available at GSK as needed. The collaboration is currently led by Manu De Rycker at the DDU and Tim Miles at GSK. Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease are two infectious diseases caused by related parasites from the kinetoplastid family and affect many millions of people worldwide. Currently available drugs have significant drawbacks and there is an urgent need for new, better treatments. In spite of this, there are few concerted drug discovery efforts aimed at tackling these diseases. The fully integrated DDU-GSK collaboration is world-leading in terms of addressing this gap and has successfully delivered two compounds to human clinical trials.
On winning the Industry and Academic Collaboration Award for 2024, the team said:
The Team is delighted to win the Industry & Academic Collaboration Award. It’s great recognition of a truly integrated industry-academia collaboration that has delivered multiple clinical candidates for Neglected Tropical Diseases. The success of our collaboration is down to a brilliant group of like-minded scientists working together towards a single aim.
As scientists, we hope that our work will have a positive impact on society and GSK’s collaboration with DDU is a great example of how high quality science and effective industry-academic partnerships can do that, in this case by delivering promising drug candidates for some of the most neglected populations in world.
It has been a real privilege to have been part of such a great team of scientists since the inception of this industry-academic partnership. A fully integrated team with the passion and drive to deliver new safe and effective treatments to those populations most in need
It’s a great honour for the Team to receive this Award, thank you very much. It’s inspiring to be part of such a committed, highly innovative and integrated group of scientists who are passionate about delivering potential treatments for NTD patients that urgently need them.
The DDU Kinetoplastid Team.