A SCOTTISH university has partened up with a global biopharmaceutical company to develop new treatments for severe skin diseases with a high level of unmet medical attention.
The University of Dundee is collaborating with global biopharmaceutical company Almirall to develop new treatments.
The collaboration will accelerate the discovery of innovative medicines by bringing together Almirall’s expertise in dermatology with the world-leading work of Professor Alessio Ciulli.
Professor Ciulli is a pioneer in the field of proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs), a new pharmaceutical modality with the potential to revolutionise drug discovery.
While most conventional drugs inhibit cellular targets, PROTACs actually destroy them by manipulating the cell’s natural system for clearing unwanted or damaged proteins.
There are many severe skin diseases with a high level of unmet medical need, and the Almirall-Dundee collaboration aims to identify and develop a novel class of medicines that target and treat these conditions
Professor Ciulli, Chair of Chemical Structural Biology at Dundee said: “We are looking forward to working on this new research collaboration with Almirall and excited to partner with one of the world-leading companies in the therapeutic area of dermatology.
“We will work together to advance a next-generation of first-in-class degraders as pharmaceutical agents. These will eliminate protein drivers of disease to ultimately benefit patients.”
The main objective of this collaboration is to identify and develop new PROTAC degrader compounds on a set of innovative and exclusive biological targets defined by Almirall that qualify key research milestones for further development as candidate drugs.
