Date Published:
5 November 2006 |
Medicines from the rain forests - Newcastle University, UK
A Newcastle University company which has developed the world's fastest drug
profiling system has joined forces with a Brazilian company to seek new medicines
from the South American rain forests.
At a time when the number of new drugs in the world's development pipeline
has dwindled, the University's drug discovery company e-Therapeutics has
formed a partnership with Brazilian company Grupo TCI to establish a joint
research facility close to the Amazonian and Atlantic rain forests, to start
testing substances from the millions of plants in the most diverse ecosystem
on the planet.
New medicines are needed to combat a range of diseases which threaten to reach
pandemic levels, including drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis and virus
infections like avian flu. New drugs are also being sought for tropical diseases
which occur in Brazil, such as hepatitis C, Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis.
In a separate deal, e-Therapeutics is joining forces with CURA, a pharmaceutical
consortium backed by the Brazilian Government, which is establishing a cluster
of drug discovery, development and marketing industries in North East Brazil.
This will give e-Therapeutics a base from which to access to Brazilian pharmaceutical
companies.
e-Therapeutics was spun out of Newcastle University in 2003 by Professor Malcolm
Young, who developed new 'systems biology' techniques which can accurately
predict the biological effect of any substance on any human tissue and on pathogens,
such as bacteria and viruses. He attracted more than £10m research funding
from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and other organisations
to turn his ideas into practice.
Professor Young demonstrated the effectiveness of its technology by correctly
predicting the effects of known drugs, such as 103 known antibiotics. But it
also uncovered unknown antibiotics, which are now entering drug development.
e-Therapeutics is not alone in hunting for rain forest medicines but has the
advantage of a system which typically takes only two weeks to assess a substance,
as opposed to two years by conventional processes.
Professor Young, who is now Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Newcastle University, said:
" This is a fantastic opportunity to investigate Brazil's colossal
biodiversity with our cutting edge technology. There is enormous potential
for drug discovery
in the rain forests, where there are millions of plant species, many of which
produce bioactive chemicals."
Roberto Marinho Filho, President of Grupo TCI, said:
" This new partnership
will enable us to access our rich resource of natural compounds and, through
e-Therapeutics novel technology, determine the medical use of these natural
compounds. This will open the current bottlenecks in developing new drugs.
We will be using the world’s fastest compound profiling system, so the
process of discovery of medicines, which can reduce the two years required
currently for these processes to about two weeks."
e-Therapeutics was able to link up to the Brazilian companies with the assistance
of the North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC), an organisation formed
by the 200 Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology, Speciality, Commodity and Petrochemical
companies based in the North East of England. NEPIC says that it intends to
provide industrial connections and support for e-Therapeuitics as it grows.
Funding for e-Therapeutics has included a £90,000 investment from NStar,
an independent early stage technology venturing company, via its Proof of Concept
Fund (POC) in 2004. This helped to accelerate the development of e-Therapeutics
by financing research and demonstrating the company's capabilities in the pharmaceuticals
and biotechnology markets.
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