Expert Team Get £5m To Speed Up New Drugs Process

Glasgow scientists have been given £5million to develop technology which could speed up the availability of new life-saving drugs and cut animal testing. Researchers are to create an artificial sensor or “molecular nose” which could predict how human cells will respond to new medicine.

The technology, being headed up by Professor Walter Kolch of Glasgow University, could halve the time drugs are made available on the market.
advertisement It will allow drug effects to be predicted at an early stage, cutting the amount of animal experiments needed.

Scientists say it could save years of medical research work and millions of pounds of investment. They are aiming to develop a probe of up to a million sensors which could be inserted into microscopic cells to track cell responses to new drugs.

Professor Kolch said: “Having trained the molecular nose with drugs that have known side effects it will then be able to sniff out quickly whether a new drug has any of the wanted effects and which side effects are expected.”

The project was funded by a £5m grant from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The team is made up of biologists, engineers and computing scientists from Glasgow and Strathclyde universities.

Professor Kolch said: “This ability to compare new drugs early against existing drugs will save many years of development work and millions of pounds of investment. It will also reduce the requirement for animal experimentation. Drugs take at least 15 years and half a billion pounds to develop. If we knock years off that it’s a huge saving.”