{"id":959,"date":"2013-09-19T07:30:28","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T07:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.dundee.ac.uk\/ian-gilbert\/?page_id=959"},"modified":"2019-12-01T10:36:52","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T10:36:52","slug":"news","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/ian-gilbert\/news\/","title":{"rendered":"News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On the 10th July 2019<\/span>, the Drug Discovery Unit team led by Ian Gilbert, Kevin Read and Beatriz Baraga\u00f1a were awarded the \u201cProject of the Year 2018<\/a>\u201d from Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) for their discovery work on potential new drugs for malaria. The annual award goes to the scientific partners involved in that year\u2019s most exciting project from the MMV portfolio. MMV is the world\u2019s leading product development partnership (PDP) for discovering and developing new effective and affordable medicines to treat malaria.<\/p>\n

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Wellcome Centre Anti-Infectives Research Conference ‘Setting our sights on infectious diseases’ was held at University of Dundee from 12th to 15th May 2019. It’s aim was to harness cross-disciplinary and cross-disease learning to accelerate drug discovery and reduce drug candidate attrition rates for infectious diseases affecting low and middle income countries. A focus of the discussions were on new ideas and technologies and how to apply them to diseases where challenges to drug discovery are hampering progress.<\/p>\n

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Scientists from the Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery Division in the School of Life Sciences ran a wide variety of hands-on science demonstrations for the public in the University\u2019s LifeSpace Science Art Research Gallery on Saturday 11th<\/sup>\u00a0May 2019. This was part of the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research\u2019s Dundee Drug Design: Drug Discovery afternoon of activities and tours.<\/p>\n

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Our image was featured on the front cover of the 14 February 2019 issue of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry<\/a>. The picture is of the preclinical candidate for visceral leishmaniasis docked into a homology model of the active site of CRK12, superimposed onto microscopy images of Leishmania donovani-infected THP-1 macrophages. The edition features our paper ‘Identification of GSK3186899\/DDD853651 as a Preclinical Development Candidate for the Treatment of Visceral Leishmaniasis’ J. Med. Chem., 2019, 62 (3), pp 1180\u20131202<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The DDU inspired illustrated children book \u2018Kirsty\u2019s Project: Searching for a New Medicine<\/a>\u2019 won the Brian Cox Prize for Excellence in Public Engagement with Research \u2018Project of the Year\u2019 award<\/a>. The book was written by Suzanne Duce<\/a> and Tracy Bayliss with illustrations by Daisy MacGowan. The book is about a young girl with a curious nature who visit the DDU as part of a school project. The middle part of the book is her report where she explains how the DDU scientists have developed a potential new drug for Leishmaniasis. This was a truly collaborative project involving input from staff and their children from across the School. The book has been translated into Spanish for GSK who ordered 1,000 copies.<\/p>\n

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Ian’s second Nature publication<\/a> in a month, ‘Challenges and Recent Progress in Drug Discovery for Tropical Diseases’ review, is published in the Insight Edition Topics<\/a> (July 2018).<\/p>\n

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\nDiscovery of a new potential treatment<\/a> for visceral leishmaniasis is published in Nature<\/a> and reported on STV news<\/a> and in The Times<\/a> (July 2018)<\/p>\n

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A team from the School of Life Sciences lead by Dr Suzanne Duce<\/a> took their pop-up exhibition \u201cInfection\u201d to the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases festival<\/a> at Wellcome Trust, London, where they won the ISNTD award for Art (February 2018).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n