Following, a major award to set up the National Kinase Profiling Centre in 2008, The MRC-PPU has now received two further awards to enhance its major collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry.
Carol MacKintosh and Nick Morrice have been awarded a 3-year grant of £327,000 from the MRC-National Health Service Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme, which will enhance the Unit's capability to generate and mine larger data sets of cellular phosphoproteins to identify new mechanisms underlying diseases and drug actions. Based on the initial results that Carol and Nick have generated, the five major pharmaceutical companies with whom we collaborate in the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) are excited by the potential of these methods to help in the prioritisation of drug candidates for human clinical trials.
The MRC-National Health Service Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme have also awarded Dario Alessi, Simon Arthur, Philip Cohen and Kei Sakamoto a three year grant of £386,000 to further exploit in vivo models for the validation of protein kinases as drug targets. The award recognises the exciting results obtained recently by Dario Alessi's research team in particular, who exploited several in vivo models to demonstrate that inhibitors of the protein kinase PDK1 and activators of the AMP-activated protein kinase are likely to have therapeutic benefit for the treatment of cancers caused by mutations in the tumour suppressor PTEN. Dario's Group have also used a further in vivo model to validate the protein kinase SPAK/STK39 as a novel target for the treatment of hypertension. The new award will allow the Unit to expand its research in this area and to validate other protein kinases for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases and diabetes, as well as cancer and hypertension.
These two new grants, together with the previous one to set up the National Kinase Profiling Centre, brings the total sum awarded to expand the Unit's work in Translational Medicine to £1.7 million over the past eight months. The awards will reinforce the Unit's major collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry, which is aimed at accelerating the development of drugs that modulate the activities of protein kinases and protein phosphatases.
Carol MacKintosh and Nick Morrice have been awarded a 3-year grant of £327,000 from the MRC-National Health Service Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme, which will enhance the Unit's capability to generate and mine larger data sets of cellular phosphoproteins to identify new mechanisms underlying diseases and drug actions. Based on the initial results that Carol and Nick have generated, the five major pharmaceutical companies with whom we collaborate in the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) are excited by the potential of these methods to help in the prioritisation of drug candidates for human clinical trials.
The MRC-National Health Service Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme have also awarded Dario Alessi, Simon Arthur, Philip Cohen and Kei Sakamoto a three year grant of £386,000 to further exploit in vivo models for the validation of protein kinases as drug targets. The award recognises the exciting results obtained recently by Dario Alessi's research team in particular, who exploited several in vivo models to demonstrate that inhibitors of the protein kinase PDK1 and activators of the AMP-activated protein kinase are likely to have therapeutic benefit for the treatment of cancers caused by mutations in the tumour suppressor PTEN. Dario's Group have also used a further in vivo model to validate the protein kinase SPAK/STK39 as a novel target for the treatment of hypertension. The new award will allow the Unit to expand its research in this area and to validate other protein kinases for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases and diabetes, as well as cancer and hypertension.
These two new grants, together with the previous one to set up the National Kinase Profiling Centre, brings the total sum awarded to expand the Unit's work in Translational Medicine to £1.7 million over the past eight months. The awards will reinforce the Unit's major collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry, which is aimed at accelerating the development of drugs that modulate the activities of protein kinases and protein phosphatases.