An experimental anti-obesity drug which could one day be given as a chewing gum is among three projects to win funding under a new scheme from the Wellcome Trust.
The world’s second-largest medical research charity, Wellcome said on Monday it had awarded a research grant to Imperial College London for the work under its 91 million pounds ($176 million) Seeding Drug Discovery scheme — the largest fund of its kind outside the United States.
Other projects eligible for first-round grants are a new drug for fighting cancer being worked on at Bristol University and a medicine against the MRSA superbug from Oxford-based biotech firm Prolysis.
The two university groups and biotech company will each get between 2.3 million and 3.5 million pounds to help them fund research to the point where big drugmakers or venture capitalists have an incentive to step in.
Ted Bianco, Wellcome’s director of technology transfer, said the goal was to bridge a funding gap between micro grants available under government schemes and the larger, later-stage investments provided by capital markets.
Venture capitalists, in particular, have become wary of funding risky early stage research since the bursting of the technology bubble at the start of the decade.
"The core of this initiative is getting more players involved in the business of drug discovery," Bianco told reporters.
Wellcome’s investment is charitable, but the organization will share in any wealth created as a result of its funding, he added.
APPETITE-SUPPRESSANT
Professor Steve Bloom of Imperial College said the cash would allow his team to progress their idea for a new appetite-suppressant based on the natural gut hormone pancreatic polypeptide (PP).
Bloom, who has been working on the project for some years, is convinced PP will not have the side effects found with other obesity drugs, including Sanofi-Aventis’s Acomplia.
But he has so far failed to find a commercial backer because the medicine is a large protein and cannot be made into a pill.
He believes an easy-to-use, insulin-pen-type injection could be available in five to eight years, and in the long term the drug could be put into a chewing gum and absorbed in the mouth. Alternatively, it might be sprayed up the nose.
The Bristol University work on cancer is based on a new way of switching off one of the key mechanisms that leads to the development and growth of tumour cells, while Prolysis is working on a drug that blocks a protein needed for MRSA bacteria to divide.
