The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) and the Neglected Global Diseases Initiative at the University of British Columbia (NGDI-UBC) today announced that they will collaborate on developing interventions for neglected global diseases and ensuring their delivery to those in need.
"We hope to leverage CDRD's drug development platform and expertise to accelerate the development of much-needed therapeutics that address neglected global diseases, while at the same time NGDI-UBC will ensure reasonable, fair and affordable access for developing countries," said Dr. Kishor M. Wasan, Director and Co-Founder, NGDI-UBC and Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UBC. "Any joint project approved by CDRD will be developed within the context of UBC's Global Access Principles, which was an important criteria for our group," added Dr. Wasan.
"NGDI-UBC brings to CDRD an extensive network of expertise that extends across broad disciplinary boundaries. This partnership will augment our ongoing drug development efforts, including some projects already underway with world leading scientists in the area of neglected global diseases," said Karimah Es Sabar, Senior Vice President, Business & Strategic Affairs at CDRD.
For example, Drs. Bill Mohn and Lindsay Eltis - both professors from the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at UBC - are jointly working on a project that addresses Tuberculosis (TB), which has been identified by the World Health Organization as a critical neglected global disease. Their development work on the "Identification of small molecule inhibitors of cholesterol degradation as a therapeutic approach to the treatment of Tuberculosis" has been enabled by the drug development platform at CDRD.
"Collaborating with CDRD has provided Dr. Eltis and I with the access to the drug development infrastructure and expertise required to turn out a bench-top assay into a high-throughput screen," said Dr. Bill Mohn.
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