PhaSER Biomedical receives $2.3m drug discovery grant from the Gates Foundation

Every year, tuberculosis, malaria and HIV cause over five million deaths worldwide

PhaSER Biomedical has received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation worth $2.3m to accelerate drug discovery and development.

PhaSER’s technology, 8HUM, will become a collaborating institution within the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory Programme, funded by the Gates Foundation.

As part of the three-year programme, PhaSER will provide 8HUM transgenic mouse models, humanised for key pathways involved in the metabolism and disposition of drugs, to all grantees of the foundation.

Collaborating researchers involved in combating diseases including malaria, tuberculosis (TB), HIV, pandemic preparedness and non-hormonal contraception will be provided with access to the drug discovery and development platform.

Considered the ‘big three’ infectious diseases, TB, malaria and HIV are responsible for more than five million deaths worldwide every year.

Formed in 2022 in collaboration with researchers at the University of Dundee, CXR Biosciences, Taconic Farms and the Scottish Enterprise, these transgenic mouse models portray the ways drugs are metabolised in humans and have a variety of applications in drug discovery and development, including drug efficacy, the prediction of drug and drug interactions, and more informed designs of clinical trials.

The Edinburgh-based company’s 8HUM models will accelerate the discovery and development of new treatments for diseases, reduce attrition when drugs reach the clinic and reduce animal use and development costs.

Previous research has demonstrated that the model successfully addresses common drug discovery and development challenges, including in vivo drug efficacy, which arises because of mouse-specific metabolism issues – a key stage of compound progression.

The model will significantly reduce drug discovery and development times while increasing the probability of delivering safe and efficacious drugs to patients worldwide.

Professor Roland Wolf, founder of PhaSER, said that the support from the Gates Foundation “will allow [the company] to provide these valuable mice to drug discovery groups working on some of the most pressing global health care challenges we are faced with today”.

He added: “We look forward to continuing our work to accelerate and improve drug discovery activities.”