Oxford Drug Design gets a share of a £3 million Collaborative Discovery Programme

Oxford Drug Design is among the first three companies to be awarded a share of a £3 million Collaborative Discovery Programme (CDP) announced by the Cystic Fibrosis Antimicrobial Resistance (CF AMR) Syndicate.  

The £3 million programme, funded by LifeArc, a self-funded, not-for-profit medical research charity, will support six early-stage novel antimicrobial projects over two years to accelerate new treatments for lung infections in people with CF.

Cystic Fibrosis affects over 162,000 people globally, and 11,000 in the UK. People with CF are affected by life-threatening lung infections that can permanently change lung function and reduce their quality of life. Growing resistance to antimicrobials and a lack of effective treatments means that there continues to be an urgent need to identify new therapies.

Oxford Drug Design is a biotechnology company using pioneering AI computational methods to discover and develop novel therapeutics across a wide range of challenging diseases with high unmet medical needs. The company has been awarded £466K of the £3m fund to help identify a new therapy for the treatment of bacterial infections in CF sufferers.

The 18-month project will be undertaken in collaboration with Prof. Jo Fothergill of Liverpool University, an expert in this field of research, building on previous, significant work by Oxford Drug Design in identifying new compounds to treat multi drug-resistant bacterial infections, the company said. These compounds will be used as starting points to develop a treatment optimised specifically for people with CF.

Research and development advisors from the CF AMR Syndicate will provide wider support for Oxford Drug Design and other awardees to help advance their projects, including a cross-sector of experts from drug discovery, academia, and the clinic, as well as people with lived experience drawn from the CF AMR network, the company said.

Bicycle Therapeutics and BioVersys are also among the first companies granted funding from the CDP at this stage.

Dr Paula Sommer, Head of Research at Cystic Fibrosis Trust, said: “For people with CF, lung infections can cause breathlessness and difficulty breathing. They can also cause major disruptions to day-to-day life, meaning people can miss work or school. Lung infections are hard to treat due to antimicrobial resistance, which is why we’re delighted to see the CF AMR Syndicate support these projects that will develop new antimicrobial treatments for CF.” 

Dr Paul Finn, CSO of Oxford Drug Design, said: “We are very excited to receive this CF AMR Syndicate Collaborative Drug Discovery Programme award. We will be expanding our antibacterial discovery efforts into this new area of application, which is of high unmet medical need, and advancing the programme with our proprietary computational and GenAI platform”.