Dundee and GSK join forces to fight tropical diseases

THE University of Dundee has received more than £10 million to work with pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on treatments for tropical diseases.

The partnership aims to produce a treatment against at least one of a number of “neglected tropical diseases” in the next five years. The Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at Dundee will work with GSK at its Tres Cantos medicines development campus in Spain on research into treatments for Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and African sleeping sickness.

It is being supported by a grant of £8.6m from the Wellcome Trust. The funding comes in addition to a recent award of £1.5m by the trust to investigate one of the diseases.

Professor Paul Wyatt, head of the DDU, said: “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.”