Hub projects and areas of interest
There are many interesting projects across the university that offer the potential for translation to patient benefit. We have drawn upon internal and external expertise to review, prioritise and de-risk around 100 assets to create a portfolio of around 20-30 high quality projects.
Our current projects include:
- Novel repurposing of inhibitors for treatment of neurological disease
- Novel small molecule inhibitors of DNA replication
- New targets in DNA replication inhibition with novel compounds
- Novel immune-based approach for targeting inflammatory diseases
- Novel target in cancer treatment
- Novel mechanism to stimulate anti-tumour immune responses
- Novel approaches to blocking thromboinflammation
- Novel nanobody platform for acute coronary syndromes
Areas of interest
Our areas of strength and interest include cancer, inflammation, cardiovascular, ageing, immunology, pain, scarring and infection although we are interested in any projects that offer patient benefit.
We are using targeted funding to move these projects across the translation gap as illustrated (adapted from McCammon, M., Pio, E., Barakat, S. et al Corporate venture capital and Cambridge. Nat Biotechnol 32, 975–978 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3029)
Why do we need to do this? Well, the major challenge academics face is gaining funding to bridge the gap between areas supported by research councils and charities towards generating data that would make a project attractive for commercial investment. This lack of funding can be a barrier to the translation of the most exciting work into patient benefit and is confounded by a lack of expertise to assess project value (McCammon et al, 2014).
Here at the University of Birmingham, we have considerable expertise in drug discovery ranging from target biology to medicinal chemistry and on-site HTS through to direct clinical access and clinical trials expertise.
We also have an extensive network of aligned internal and external experts with the passion and experience to select and drive the right drug projects plus the experts to make the right connections with Pharma and VCs to capitalise on opportunities.