The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) and the Neglected Global Diseases Initiative at the University of British Columbia (NGDI-UBC) 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.
About the Neglected Global Diseases Initiative at UBC
The Neglected Global Diseases Initiative at UBC (NGDI-UBC) brings together the technical expertise and perspectives of a variety of disciplines at UBC – including bench science, pharmaceutical and health research, business, social policy, and law – to develop interventions for neglected global diseases and ensure their delivery to those in need. For more information, visit www.ngdi.ubc.ca.
About CDRD
The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) (www.cdrd.ca) provides drug development expertise and infrastructure to enable researchers from leading academic and health research institutions to advance promising, early-stage drug candidates. CDRD combines its drug development platform with a commercial arm, which licenses technologies from affiliated institutions and establishes working collaborations with other biotech and lifesciences companies. The Government of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence program has recognized CDRD as a Centre of Excellence in Commercialization in Research (CECR).
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For additional information, please contact:
Jodi Regts
Director, Communications
Centre for Drug Research and Development
(604) 221-7750 x182
jregts@cdrd.ca
Dr. Kishor Wasan
Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Director and Co-Founder, NGDI-UBC
(604) 822-4889
kwasan@interchange.ubc.ca
PDF version of this release available here.