College of Life Sciences Buidling

Drug Discovery Unit, Dundee

The DDU is housed in purpose built modern laboratories allowing all disciplines to be located in close proximity.

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An image of a Parasite

Neglected Tropical Diseases

One of the major initiatives of the DDU is the discovery of leads and pre-clinical candidates for the treatment of diseases such as sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis.
See our Major Initiatives

An images of Cells

Innovative Targets and Pathways

We are investigating highly innovative targets and pathways to validate them and establish proof of principle.

See our Major Initiatives

The Robot used for Screening

Hit Discovery

We have a purpose-built screening laboratory with a suite of assay technologies and automated liquid handling to enable concurrent screening of a broad range of target and assay types.

See our Capabilities

Chemistry in the Lab

Medicinal Chemistry

We have a medicinal chemistry team with a large amount of experience from the Pharmaceutical/ Biotech sector.

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Computational Chemistry

Computational Chemistry

Involved in library selection, assessment of hits and drug design.

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Using the LC-MS/MS

DMPK

The DMPK group has state of the art UPLC-MSMS technology for supporting hit to lead and lead optimisation programmes.

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Tablets - the end product

Our Aims

The aims of the DDU are to produce leads and candidates suitable for entry into formal preclinical development.

INITIATIVES

The Dundee Drug Discovery Unit has two major initiatives, neglected tropical diseases and innovative targets and pathways. Major Initiatives

CAPABILITIES

The DDU is a fully operational and integrated drug discovery team with the full range of disciplines needed for drug discovery. Capabilities

CURRENT PORTFOLIO

We have a healthy pipeline of molecular targets in both the neglected tropical diseases initiative and the innovative targets and pathways initiative.
Current Portfolio


THE DRUG DISCOVERY UNIT

The Dundee Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) was founded in 2006 in the College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, with the aim of translating basic science into lead compounds to validate putative drug targets, to use as tools to investigate disease pathways and, when appropriate, advance to pre-clinical drug candidates. The DDU works to Biotech style philosophy and standards incorporating, dynamic, goal driven Project Management based on Target Product Profiles and Compound Selection Criteria. The DDU has two major research focuses.

  • neglected tropical diseases
  • innovative targets and pathways

The DDU has all of the capabilities required for early phase drug discovery: assay development, high throughput screening, cell biology, medicinal chemistry, structural biology, computational chemistry and DMPK. All of these capabilities operate under one management structure to ensure an integrated approach and rapid progress.

Currently the team is about 30 people and includes substantial experience from the pharmaceutical/ biotech sector. This website contains details of current programmes and supporting infrastructure.

Please feel free to Contact Us.

Vision, Mission, Objectives of the DDU


Vision

  • To be an internationally recognised drug discovery group and partner of choice for both academic and industrial sectors

Mission

  • To increase the efficiency and success in translating life sciences research into therapeutic applications to address unmet medical needs

Key Objectives

  • To translate basic biomedical research into candidate medicines for neglected diseases
  • To greatly enhance the value of novel therapeutic targets through small molecule discovery