£13.6million Award for Anti-Infectives Research at Dundee  

The University of Dundee has been awarded £13.6 million to establish The Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research (CAIR), set to build on world-leading work at the University’s School of Life Sciences aimed at finding new drugs to treat neglected tropical diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and leishmaniasis.

These are diseases which affect millions of people and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. They disproportionately affect the poor and cost developing economies billions of dollars.

“This is a major boost from Wellcome for our research at Dundee, and will allow us to grow our capacity in drug discovery and development for neglected diseases,” said Professor Paul Wyatt, Director of CAIR.

“It will also mean we can expand our international collaborations, catalyse new projects and provide resources to carry out drug discovery training for scientists from countries where these diseases are endemic.There is an urgent need to find new treatments for these diseases, where there is increasing resistance to old drugs. We are at the forefront of this global effort to find new therapeutics and this award from Wellcome will further strengthen our efforts,” he added.

Last year researchers in the Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee announced the discovery of a new antimalarial compound with the potential to treat malaria patients in a single dose. It is now in clinical development.

The Wellcome award is part of a £118 million investment in major research centres over the next five years. The Wellcome Centres all aim to advance our understanding of health and disease, span fundamental and social sciences, clinical research and engineering.