Kings College/ LRI CRUK Division of Cancer Studies New Hunt's House Guy's Campus St Thomas' St London SE1 1UL Peter.2.parker@kcl.ac.uk
GMEC Drug Discovery Working Group
Programme leadership
Prof Peter Parker
Dr Cathy Tralau-Stewart
Head of Drug Discovery Imperial College London Drug Discovery Centre South Kensington London SW7 2AZ ctralau@imperial.ac.uk
Programme members
Prof Steve Caddick University College London
Prof Chris Abell Cambridge University
Prof Tom Blundell Cambridge University
Prof Antony Galione Oxford University
Prof Paul Freemont Imperial College London
The environment for early drug discovery is undergoing significant change. The pharmaceutical industry is re-structuring towards a model, which involves a greater emphasis on development activities. Most pharmaceutical companies now aspire to access up to 50% of their new targets/ development compounds externally, from Biotech and academia. However, these projects need to be advanced towards pre-clinical or clinical validation phases prior to industry involvement. The investments of Research Councils and Medical Research Charities in academic research needs to be linked in practical ways to development initiatives where benefits both to patients and the economy are delivered. The development of a strong pipeline of drug development activities from academia is entirely in line with the experimental medicine agenda of the Biomedical Research Centres and Research Councils.
Historically, the challenge of converting academic research into drug discovery projects has been hampered by lack of appropriate expertise, basic tools and paucity of funding. If the UK is to improve its translational medicine record in the drug discovery space academia needs to have access to appropriate expertise and capabilities. With such resources academia could become a major player in the development of innovative and important new medicines.
However, few academic institutions have the full array of resources required and it is economically inefficient to develop them in each institution. Therefore, to optimise academic efforts in this arena there is a strong desire to see partnerships develop that brings different skills to these programmes so covering the entire drug development pathway. This will provide both new opportunities to those involved in such programmes and a template of activities through which academics can move projects forward. The GMEC DDWG aims to address these issues to encourage the efficient translation of drug discovery from academia.
