Healthcare experts and collaborators at Sunderland have been awarded funding of almost £50,000 from Northern Accelerator to develop a drug for the pre-clinical proof-of-concept stage over the next eight months
Symptoms of people suffering Cystinuria, which leads to painful kidney stones, or the rare Wilson’s Disease, a toxic build-up of copper in the liver and brain, could be managed and improved with the development of a new therapeutic drug.
The project complements pioneering research by <a href=”https://www.sunderland.ac.uk/more/research/roz-anderson/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Professor Roz Anderson</a> and her team who have brought new hope to patients with life-threatening genetic diseases. Cystinosis is an extremely rare condition that, if untreated, can result in patients suffering kidney failure before the age of 10. Professor Anderson sadly lost her battle with cancer last June, but managed to secure £1.6m from the Medical Research Council (MRC) which is taking her research work – designing drugs that could treat and improve the quality of life for Cystinosis patients – to clinical trials.
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People
Academic
Professor Herbie Newell
Professor of Drug Development at the University of Sunderland
Sunderland is establishing a critical mass of research focussing on the discovery of new medicines for the treatment of rare inherited metabolic diseases, where there is a significant unmet clinical need. This new project has the potential to offer new hope for patients with two such diseases.
