Drug Discovery Unit, University of Dundee

We are excited to have this opportunity through CARE Consortium to work with Novartis Biomedical Research to take forward a lead compound originally developed against SARS-CoV-2 but showing promising pan-coronavirus activity and low mutation risk and, therefore, lower chance of treatment resistance. #TeamScience #collaboration #drugdiscovery

In April 2024 Drug Discovery Unit, University of Dundee were honoured to announce that we had been awarded the Royal Society of Edinburgh Mary Sommerville Medal for team work and collaborative endeavour which has led to real world impact. https://lnkd.in/ejC__Yzb Last week Nicole Mutter, Thomas Eadsforth, Leah Torrie and Beatriz Baragana were invited to the RSE to collect the medal on behalf of all their colleagues. Everyone at the DDU thanks the RSE for recognising the achievements of the DDU and our many collaborators over the last 18 years. We are all extremely proud of the impact of our research to address unmet medical needs across the globe. We pass on our thanks to Royal Society of Edinburgh for producing a certificate for every member of the DDU. This has helped make it a truly shared experience for all of us and for each individual to feel that their contribution to team DDU has been recognised.

Novartis Biomedical Research and the University of Dundee Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) are collaborating to advance drugs to help address global health challenges, including an antimalarial that targets dormant parasites, and a broad-spectrum anti-viral compound for pandemic preparedness. Learn more in this DDU story: https://lnkd.in/gcDqANkq #infectiousdisease #drugdevelopment

Submissions for #OpenChagas are open!  Open Chagas 🔬 is a program of @Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative - DNDi that aims to create a collaborative Research & Development network dedicated to the discovery of new drugs to cure #Chagasdisease. Researchers from all over Latin America who have the following project focuses can register to receive expert feedback:  ▶ Investigation of new chemical entities (small molecules)  ▶ Repurposed drugs  ▶ Natural products (isolated and characterized compounds, not extracts)  ▶ Innovative combinations  🔗 Learn more and submit your project: dndi.org/open-chagas

I am very excited to share our latest publication on Cryptosporidium Lysyl-tRNA synthetase inhibitors. We showed that a balance between solubility and permeability is critical for in vivo efficacy in mouse models of cryptosporidiosis infections. We identified two late leads with excellent efficacy in immunocompromised mouse models and in a disease relevant calf model of infection. I would like to thank my team and everyone at Drug Discovery Unit, University of Dundee and our collaborators Mattie C Pawlowic at WCAIR and Huston Christopher at University of Vermont. Special thanks to Nicola Caldwell for her brilliant work to have this paper published. Cryptosporidiosis is a diarrheal disease that it is severe in malnourished children and immunocompromised patients. There is no vaccine or effective treatment for the population at greater risk.

In the DDU’s latest paper Fraser Hughes and Alex Cookson from the our compound management team investigated an issue which impacts on the results of high through-put screening with compound libraries. Dry DMSO can rapidly pull water vapor out of the air due to its hygroscopic nature. This is a well-documented problem within drug discovery, particularly within high-throughput screening (HTS). This hydration is caused by atmospheric moisture being absorbed each time a compound library is used. This effect becomes increasingly pronounced when a compound library is used routinely. The result of this hydration is a change to both the total volume of solution and the concentration of sample still in solution. This can result in a large amount of variability in the measured biological activity of a sample depending on the library usage. In this paper, we show the detrimental effects the hydration of sample libraries has on the reproducibility of biological data and present a novel way to remove it from HTS library plates. Read their solution in SLAS Technology vol 29 https://lnkd.in/eVJgxz6S   We thank Roylan Developments Ltd and in particular Stuart Naylor for help with this project. #drugdiscovery #highthroughputscreening #compoundlibraries #methoddevelopment #publication

Celebrating and supporting each other’s success is a key part of our culture. Let’s aim to keep our spin outs in Dundee.

The Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at the University of Dundee initiated collaboration this summer on two projects with the Biomedical Research division of Novartis and is extremely proud of this joint effort to drive forward new candidate drugs for malaria Beatriz Baragana and Kate McGonagle and pandemic preparedness Duncan Scott. #infectiousdisease #drugdevelopment

As inscrições para a Fase 1 do #OpenChagas estão abertas!🔬 O Open Chagas é um programa de inovação aberta que estabelece um canal de comunicação direta entre a Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative - DNDi e a comunidade de drug discovery para doença de Chagas. Pesquisadores de toda a América Latina que possuem projetos de pesquisa nas linhas temáticas abaixo podem se inscrever: ▶ Novas entidades químicas (pequenas moléculas)  ▶ Medicamentos reposicionados  ▶ Produtos naturais (compostos isolados, não extratos)  ▶ Combinações inovadoras Nesta primeira fase todos os inscritos receberão um feedback especializado do nosso time de experts, e nas fases seguintes ainda terão a possibilidade de gerar novos dados para seu projeto e de iniciar uma nova colaboração com o consórcio Lead Optimization Latin America (LOLA). As submissões vão até 31 de dezembro de 2024. 🔗 Saiba mais e inscreva-se: https://lnkd.in/d6K9WSuS

Drug Discovery Africa 2025, abstract submission update. Thank you to everyone who has already submitted abstracts for the conference. It has been exciting to receive so many abstracts across all the conference themes. We have some good news for all of you struggling to find time to write your abstract while running your research. We will extend the abstract deadline until 23:30 GMT on Sunday 27th October 2024. This is the deadline for anyone who wants their abstract considered for a short-talk. As before poster submissions will be accepted up until 16th December 2024. 27th October is also the deadline for early-career researchers submitting an abstract to also submit a request for a travel bursary to help cover the cost of attending the conference. All the details are on our website: https://lnkd.in/ebRzu8fe The organising committee look forward to receiving your abstract and thank you for your interest in the conference.