Fund Set to Push Drug Discovery into Therapeutics

The University of Dundee is collaborating with TPP Global Development Ltd to establish a fund for progressing potential drug development opportunities into futuretherapeutics, with the support of the Scottish Funding Council. With activities based around the University of Dundee’s Drug Development Unit (DDU), the Target Development Fund is now calling for exciting ideas and projects from universities and research institutes worldwide.

The fund will support the translation of worldclass life sciences research into early phasedrug discovery and  development projects that address a clear unmet medical need. The data packages generated around these projects will demonstrate the appropriate disease model-based validation required to make them highly attractive to potential licensing partners from within the pharmaceutical industry. Projects developed within the fund will be able to leverage the respective strengths and  synergies between the collaboration partners; TPP can bring scientific and  commercialisationexpertise, a global network of contacts and the ability to access downstream investment funds,  while the DDU can offer world-class chemoinformatics modelling and early stagedrug discovery expertise and  infrastructure. If you have a project that you would be interested in progressing within the  Target Development Fund further information on how to apply is available at www.tppgd.com or contact Dr Barry McGuinness at targetdevelopmentfund@tppgd.com. The closing date for applications is 18th November 2011.