Bayer collaborates with two universities for TB therapies

Bayer has teamed up with the Universities of Dundee and Cape Town (UCT) in an effort to develop new treatments for tuberculosis (TB)

The collaboration combines the universities’ knowledge on TB biology, drug discovery and medicinal chemistry with Bayer’s industrial library of chemical compounds.

All three partners in the new collaboration are already members of the Tuberculosis Drug Accelerator (TBDA), a programme which aims to identify novel therapies to reduce significantly the treatment time for TB.

The tripartite collaboration will optimise hits from the Bayer compound library that were identified within the TBDA programme, with the goal of developing them into potential preclinical drug candidates, according to the University of Dundee.

TB remains one of the deadliest infectious diseases in the world. Each year, 1.5 million people globally die from TB, with over 9 million falling ill from the disease, mainly in developing countries.

The Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at the University of Dundee and UCT’s Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D) are two of the leading centres in academia for drug discovery globally, particularly relating to diseases across the developing world, according to the University of Dundee.

Paul Wyatt, director of the DDU, said: “The collaboration with UCT and Bayer will expand our TB effort, taking us from early stage drug discovery to more advanced design, synthesis and testing to identify potential drug candidates.”

The partnership with Bayer and Dundee will rely on the Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit (MMRU) - which is funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology and the South African Medical Research Council, among others - for TB biology assays and expertise.

Valerie Mizrahi, Director of the IDM and the MMRU and Digby Warner, member of the IDM and MMRU, said: “Our long-term vision has always been for South Africa, a country with a massive burden of TB, to become a significant contributor along the entire drug discovery and development pipeline, ultimately leading to the introduction of more effective anti-TB drugs in the clinic.

“This collaboration with Bayer and Dundee offers an exciting opportunity for us to contribute, in a meaningful way, towards realising that goal.”